This beautifully detailed 1972 Honda CL350 is built by Vince Green of 71 Custom Motorcycles. When Green bought the Honda it looked mint, so he hadn’t planned to do a full build, but he says, “While on the face of it the bike looked very, very good, once I started taking things apart, there was 47 years of grime.” He broke down the bike into pieces and built it back up in his vision using 3D-printed parts of his own design, including the minimalist carbon-fiber mudguard that tucks under the subtly duckbilled tail section. Green is most proud of his rattle can, two-tone paint job, finished with a high-gloss clear coat, and he says, “After 4 months and 250 hours in my shed I have a bike that is great fun to ride and looks pretty decent, too.”
Month: June 2020
Martin’s Suzuki GT125 “Atom”
In 2016 Martin Pace from Build Studio in Malta started building this 1977 Suzuki GT125, “Atom,” which he bought as a rusty frame and a box of parts. Pace says, “I don’t like mixing brands, so every part is off of some kind of Suzuki.” The front end, rear suspension, and swingarm are from a Suzuki GT185, and the reshaped fuel tank came off of a Suzuki A80. Pace wanted to communicate his love of Porsches through this bike, so he painted Atom in Porsche slate gray, which gets a lot of compliments. Pace says, “After many failed attempts at getting this bike up and running, it now finally roars to life as a one-kick wonder that makes sure you hear its arrival as it rips ’round the bend.”
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Soulship Bobbers’ Yamaha Virago
Soulship Bobbers in Greece built this Yamaha Virago XV535 café racer, painted in warm “root beer brown” with gold leaf accents. The Virago has a one-off chromoly swingarm with a Yamaha R1 monoshock suspension, and it has the front end from an ’08 Suzuki GSX-R with four-piston front brakes from a Triumph, with custom triple trees that have an analog speedometer sunk into the top yoke. Soulship Bobbers created a scratch-built subframe, then shortened the fuel tank and made a steel café-style rear cowl to match. The bike has a stainless steel, two-to-one exhaust, with a front pipe that follows the lines of the engine case and meets the rear pipe just under the polished steel battery box.
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