Category: bikes

Taking My Own Approach: Interview with Ian Halcott of Twinline Motorcycles

Post author By British Customs
Post date February 26, 2016

British Customs

Ian Halcott of Twinline Motorcycles

Ian Halcott is the founder of Twinline Motorcycles, based out of Seattle, WA. His unique custom builds have been featured in shows such as The Handbuilt Motorcycle Show and in various media outlets across the internet. He was invited by Thor Drake of See See Motorcycles to put his latest custom motorcycle on display at the 2016 One Moto Show in Portland, OR.

British Customs: How did Twinline Motorcycles get started?

Ian Halcott: I had been working on my granddad’s ’67 Honda CL160, trying to get it back on the road. I was riding a sportbike as my daily commuter, but had been going back to the old bikes and riding them more and more. I liked the way they look, and wanted to get them back on the road. There weren’t any shops around to take old bikes to, and I had always wanted to do custom work, so I used it as a chance to do something new. I found that I like exploring different styles and types. A lot of my inspiration comes from bikes made in the 60s; I think that era produced the most beautiful motorcycles. But I still like modern bikes, and want to get more into working with that world. I like to think about where I’m going instead of where I’ve been. I want to have my own approach to building a custom motorcycle.

British Customs

Custom bike by Twinline Motorcycles

BC: What inspired you to learn how to start working with your hands?

IH: I can’t just sit on my butt and stare at a computer all day long and feel like I’m being productive. I have to make things that are three dimensional and real. There are other jobs that definitely pay better, but I’m not interested in pursuing them. You know you’ve made it in motorcycles when you can’t get out of it; I’m not going to be able to get out of doing this process.

British Customs

Kawasaki Ninja 600 engine in a Honda CB500 frame

BC: Where did you learn all the skills necessary to build a custom motorcycle?

IH: I learned everything over a number of years from a number of people. I used to hang out in a lot of old timer’s shops where they had a lot of racers and flat track bikes, where I met many of my mentors. I listened to anything anyone had to tell me, because it was as much a community effort as it was anything else. The process of learning mechanical work to welding to everything else was all trial and error, and I just had to tackle everything and learn it the best that I could. If you work at it, you can eventually get to the point where you can literally build everything.

British Customs

Kawasaki Ninja 600 engine in a Honda CB500 frame

BC: What are your thoughts on where the custom motorcycle scene is going?

IH: I can’t really say. The community of builders has gotten really strong. It definitely wasn’t what it is now when I opened my garage. So many people are contributing to it now, and it seems like a new shop opens every five minutes. Of those shops, some will make great strides, and others won’t make it, but the community will still keep moving forward.

British Customs

Custom bike by Twinline Motorcycles

BC: A number of your builds have been cafe racers. Why is that?

IH: Honestly, I really suck at racing, but it’s what inspires me. I love things that are so streamlined and minimalist — racing bikes don’t have anything more than they need, and I’ll take any advantage I can get on a motorcycle. It’s the closest thing to aviation.

British Customs

Goldie by Twinline Motorcycles

BC: You’ve built a number of bikes that are very different from most custom motorcycle builders, with regards to some of your builds using modern sportbike platforms. Do you have any preferences as to what kind of system you like to work with?

IH: Not really, actually. Every motorcycle has its own specific design for what its set up to do, and I respect that. There are things I like aesthetically about air-cooled bikes, and there are reliability advantages that I like about liquid-cooled bikes. But there is something about having a relatively maintenance-free motorcycle with a lot of horsepower like today’s bikes. You don’t have get same power-to-weight ratio anywhere else. In the end, I don’t really care about the configuration: if it has wheels and a motor I’m on it. It’s all about how you utilize the platform you’re on.

British Customs

Custom Honda CB750 from Twinline Motorcycles

BC: What are you going to bring with you to The One Moto Show?

IH: I’m building an ’04 Yamaha R6 I’m calling The Legionnaire (#thelegionnairemoto). It’s my own creation, and I wouldn’t call it a street fighter or a cafe racer. It’s my vision of a modern bike with some 80s sportbike mixed with 60s TT styling. It’s a bastard, to say the least. I’m leaving everything on it raw, and I built the subframe, seat, tail section, and full aluminum fairings. Next year though, I plan to bring my granddad’s bike to The One Moto Show, since it’ll be the 50th anniversary of when he bought the bike.

For more interviews with builders from the One Moto Show, visit British-Customs.com

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Craigslist Custom Challenge!

Post author By Morgan Gales
Post date February 25, 2016

Craigslist

“Custom” gas tank on a Craigslist bike, with exhaust heat shields 1/2 off! Still listed for over $2k

“Runs great, needs TLC,”

“Runs perfect, needs new battery, needs carb cleaned,”

“Too many custom parts to list, all work done by professional, no paperwork,”

Or any of the other complete BS lines you see all over Craigslist all the time. If you’ve spent time on the ole digital classifieds, you are familiar with variety of bikes, both good and bad that sit on that site. Most of them are listed for WAY over what they should be, and most of them seem to be done by some guy in his backyard with a grinder and a hot glue gun.

Craigslist

Kawasaki KZ400 custom, posted up on Craigslist for over $6k

The Challenge:

Go on to your local Craigslist, type in ‘Custom,’ or ‘Home Custom’ or any other words or combination that may pull up some of the unholy abominations that lie dormant within the pages of these classifieds. Good or bad, cheap and classy or ugly as sin. Send your results to Cruiser@BonnierCorp.com

We will pick the best/ worst of these bikes and post them up to a gallery next week, sending out prizes to the winners!

Craigslist

When you need to live that chopper life, but can only afford a Hardly.

We wish you all happy hunting! If your time spent on CL is anything like ours, it shouldn’t take you long to find something interesting!

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Giving Old Bikes a Second Chance

Post author By British Customs
Post date February 25, 2016

British Customs

Craig Marleau of Kick Start Garage

Craig Marleau is the founder of Kick Start Garage, a custom vintage motorcycle shop based in Northern California. He specializes in building cafe racers, and was invited by Thor Drake of See See Motorcycles to put his latest custom motorcycle on display at the 2016 One Moto Show in Portland, OR.

British Customs: How did Kick Start Garage get started?

Craig Marleau: Having my own garage and making custom motorcycles has always been in the back of my head. My background is in auto restoration: I worked in a high end restoration shop working on performance cars like Aston Martins, Ferraris, and Duesenbergs and building them to show on the grass at Pebble Beach Concourse D’Elegance for 17 years. But I was always into riding street bikes and racing motorcycles. When I was a youngster, I was getting really close to losing my license, so I sold my street bike and bought a dirt bike. I enjoyed dirt riding for a while, but I really wanted to get back out on the street. So I bought an old BMW clunker to make it hard for myself to get in trouble. I spent my evenings working on the bike with my wife after I got home from my day job. Once we got the bike looking pretty good, we entered it into shows and it started winning awards. Then the economy crashed, and we moved out to Texas where I got a job in bike retail at a dealership. That’s when I started going to track days and road racing, and I really got into cafe racers and vintage bikes in particular. From then on I converted every bike I bought into a cafe racer. We moved back to California after we had kids, where we built a house and I got another job working for a dealership. When the economy tanked again. I didn’t have a job and I needed to reinvent myself, so I decided to finally open a shop working on old bikes, which is where the name Kick Start came from: all the bikes I was working on were kickstarters. The garage grew from there. I heard about The One Show, and we decided we wanted to check it out, so we loaded up the truck with one of our bikes and drove up to Portland. When we got there, we couldn’t find a parking spot, so we asked some guy walking around among all the other guys there if he knew where there was any parking, and he helped us out. We told him we brought a bike with us and asked if he knew if we could show it, and he said we sure could: it turned out the guy was Thor Drake himself. He gave us a spot to show our bike, and we’ve been going to The One Show ever since.

British Customs

Custom BMW R90/6 from Kick Start Garage

BC: What kind of bikes do you enjoy working on the most?

CM: I love working on Triumphs, actually. Especially air-cooled carbureted ones: they have clean looks and easy lines, and I don’t have to try to figure out how to hide any of the electronics. I like minimalism in my builds, so I like minimalist designs; I don’t even like batteries. I respect the simplicity of carburetors, and the old world ways of doing things. I think a lot of that is getting lost. Especially the craftsmanship of tuning, because you don’t learn anything by downloading a fuel map to your ECU — there isn’t anything hand built or custom about that. With a carburetor though, you can get in there and tune your engine by hand. That’s an art.

British Customs

Custom CB750 from Kick Start Garage

BC: How did you get started doing everything by hand?

CM: Out of necessity. At the time, I didn’t have the money to buy parts, so I figured out how to make them for myself. There were no machine shops in the area where I could hire a guy to make them for me, either. So through trial and error, I figured out how to do what I wanted to do. Once you figure out how to make things and do things by hand, it becomes a mentality. You blow the door down and just start making everything you need instead of flipping through a catalog and picking the parts that are closest to what you have in mind. That’s why we don’t have any limitations.

British Customs

Custom Honda CL350 from Kick Start Garage

BC: What is it about cafe racers that made you want to start building them?

CM: I fell in love with that whole era of motorcycling. The Italian bikes that came off the production line that were stylized like cafe racers are what first caught my eye, and then I just kept looking back at the bikes from the 60s: the Ace Cafe bikes, the Triumphs, Nortons, Tritons, all of them. I was struck by the style and design of cafe racers — the drop bars, the race-looking lines, the rearsets, the hump seat. The Velocette Thruxton was the first bike I looked at and immediately knew it was a race bike.

British Customs

Some of the custom bikes from Kick Start Garage loaded up in the trailer

BC: Why do you stick with making and working on vintage bikes?

CM: It might sound sentimental, but it’s because I want to give them a second chance. When you find them, they’re either beat down or forgotten, and nobody thinks it’s cool because it’s just an old bike. But it’s pretty darn neat when you roll up on a bike that you built and everyone wants to know all about it. Vintage bikes aren’t cookie cutter bikes: they’re unique, and you can be proud of them.

British Customs

Custom vintage Ducati from Kick Start Garage

BC: Where do you see the custom motorcycle scene going?

CM: The custom motorcycle scene is taking a shape, but it’s coming down to the same old thing about motorcycles: motorcycles are like shoes, and you have one for every mood. The trend is moving towards the old school 70s choppers, but where we want it to go and what we think is cool is the vintage motocross scene. In that vein we think the growing scene around scramblers is going to evolve and take people towards vintage motocross.

BC: What are you building for The One Moto Show?

CM: It’s going to be pretty different. We’re cross-blending brands and genres. It’s a ’71 BMW R750R with a sidecar pulling a custom ’73 Bultaco Pursang. We’re highlighting the suspension on the Bultaco with a crazy paint job and a custom seat. I almost feel like it’s too pretty to throw a leg over it, even though it’s meant to be a functional race bike. We’re thinking of calling it the Taco Truck.

For more interviews from builders at the One Moto Show, or to see their wicked bikes, check out British-Customs.com

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H-D Customized Sportster Forty-Eight: Walkaround

Post author By staff
Post date February 24, 2016

The Sportster Forty-Eight is an enticing model of Sportster. It looks mean as hell, styled after the post-war American custom bobbers of the late forties. We took our pic of some of the best and baddest accessories that Harley-Davidson had to offer and jazzed this bad boy up.

You’ll notice the custom Clubman style handlebars, mid-controls for your feet, Daymaker headlight, as well as the full H-D Rail Collection. For a more in-depth breakdown of what was done on the Sporty, stay tuned! John will have full coverage up on that soon!

for more information on the Sportster Forty-Eight, visit Harley-Davidson.com

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Escape Artist: Interview with Hill Hudson of the Escape Collective

Post author By British Customs
Post date February 24, 2016

British Customs

Hill Hudson of the Escape Collective working on his CB350 build

Hill Hudson is a herald of the New Heritage lifestyle. Hudson is a custom vintage motorcycle builder based out of Portland, OR, who works with the same tools his Brooklynite grandfather used in his machine shop established in 1886. Hudson is also a co-founder of the Escape Collective, an innovative group of builders and artists devoted to the adventure lifestyle by promoting motorcycle camping. He was invited by Thor Drake of See See Motorcycles to put his latest custom motorcycle on display at the 2016 One Moto Show in Portland, OR. – See more at: http://www.british-customs.com/triumph-motorcycle-blog/the-escape-artist-an-interview-with-hill-hudson-of-the-escape-collective/#sthash.w9kVZpo6.dpuf

British Customs: When did you first start riding?

Hill Hudson: I first started riding when I was 19 (I’m 26 now). My older brother was going to college in Rhode Island, and he came back one break on a 1965 CB160, which was entirely unexpected, and I just went, “Oh shit, that’s cool,” when I saw him pull up on it. I started looking around and I found out that the CB160 had a big brother called the CB77, nicknamed the Toaster Tank, and I picked one up. At the time I was interning for a woodworker who had bikes, and when he found out that I had just bought my first motorcycle and that it was a vintage fixer-upper, my woodworking internship immediately turned into a bike restoration internship. I spent the whole summer with that old craftsman learning how to rebuild engines, paint, and wrench. I think I became the son he never had.

British Customs

Hill Hudson mocking up the hand machined headlight for this CB350 build

BC: You make a number of things with your hands — it seems like building custom motorcycles is just one part of your creative outlet, and doesn’t wholly encompass what you do. What prompted you to get into design and fabrication?

HH: It was weird. My grandfather owned and operated a factory in Brooklyn that was established in 1886 where he made paper doilies for his company, Brooklace Paper Co. In the factory itself, he had a machine shop where he built all the tools needed to stamp the doilies. After he passed away, my brother brought all his old machinery back home. I was attending art school and getting my BA in Fine Art, and while I was working on my thesis I realized I was over illustration and wanted to get into making things by hand. I wanted to create things instead of just draw them. I moved in with my brother, and befriended James Crowe of We are West America, who taught me how to weld and machine. As I was learning these skills, I felt like I was doing what I needed to be doing: I wanted to carry on my grandfather’s legacy. My grandfather is my inspiration for building things by hand because he had this “you can build anything if you have the will to” mentality, which I began to understand once I was able to machine the parts I wanted to install on my bike. For my thesis, I decided I wanted to build a motorcycle because it encapsulated everything I learned in art school: sculpture, graphic design, illustration, and so on. My mentors pushed me hard to dive into the question of why I wanted to build a motorcycle though, and I realized it was for more reasons than they look nice: it was a way for me to escape into my work. By building a motorcycle, I was able to escape my thoughts and anxiety, work through my issues, and physically and emotionally channel myself into what I was doing. So I named the motorcycle the Escape Machine.

British Customs

The Escape Machine by Hill Hudson

“It’s so interesting that motorcycles bleed into every little thing in your life.”

BC: What is the Escape Collective?

HH: The Escape Collective was named after the Escape Machine. I had a group of friends that formed during and after college, and one year we decided that we all wanted to go to Sasquatch Music Festival. We were all engineers, art students, and builders of different kinds, and we decided to build a geodesic dome to camp in for the trip. The domes got noticed online, and started gaining traction. Afterwards, we were hired by a company to build 14 domes, and that got us started as a company. Now, we build whatever people want us to: we do experiential buildouts for events and festivals, domes for Dream Roll, a whole range of things. The Escape Collective is taking over my shop, and our goal is to advance and release a solid product line that unites motorcycles and camping.

Geodesic dome from the Escape Collective

British Customs

One of the Escape Collective’s geodesic domes

BC: What about vintage things draws you to them?

HH: Nostalgia, mostly. And the simplicity in design. I’m personally addicted to salvage and vintage because there’s a beautiful power in vintage things; they’ve been in the hands of so many people. The first motorcycle I owned was the same model that my dad owned. All my tools were my grandfather’s, and I feel connected to him by using the same tools he held.

British Customs

Hudson’s Grandfather

“There’s a beautiful power in vintage things; they’ve been in the hands of so many people.”

BC: Tell us about the build you’re preparing for The One Moto Show.

HH: The build is a bike I’m making for a client. It’s a fully custom ’73 CB350. I wanted to make a custom motorcycle that could actually be ridden, even though it was heavily modified, so I had to learn a whole new set of skills for this bike. I completely nerded out over it: I machined the headlights from scratch on the lathe, made the whole subframe, made fork tubes from stainless steel, refabbed the tank, extended the swingarm, and mirrored the angle of the forks and the angle of the shocks so that they would make a perfect triangle. I challenged myself with this build, and am pretty happy with how it turned out. It inspired me to do something even better for the next one though because it completely changed the way I think about approaching builds: it’s so easy to limit yourself when you try to model parts off of things you like instead of just making it for yourself the way you want it.

British Customs

Hudson’s 1973 Honda CB350 built for the One Moto Show left front view

British Customs

Hudson’s 1973 Honda CB350 built for the One Moto Show right side rear

British Customs

Hudson’s 1973 Honda CB350 built for the One Moto Show left side profile

British Customs

Hudson’s 1973 Honda CB350 built for the One Moto Show rear subframe detail

British Customs

Hudson’s 1973 Honda CB350 built for the One Moto Show exhaust and rear detail

For more interviews with builders from the One Moto Show, stay tuned to Moto Cruiser or visit British-Customs.com

2016 Harley-Davidson bikes cruiser Cruising Harley-Davidson Other Motorcycle Blogs review Sportster 48

5 Things I Love and Hate About the Sportster Forty-Eight

Post author By Morgan Gales
Post date February 19, 2016

Harley-Davidson

2016 Harley-Davidson Sportster Forty-Eight

From a purely aesthetic standpoint, the Forty-Eight is one of the best looking cruiser motorcycles on the market. The lines are reminiscent of old school bobbers and let’s be honest, even parked it looks like it’s ready to kick some ass. I remember the first time I saw one parked outside the super hip Standard Hotel in LA and sat there admiring it for a good 20 minutes. For a while, I really wanted one. But there are a few flaws with this model that were made obvious once hitting the road.

Harley-Davidson

2016 Sportster Forty-Eight with low handlebars and forward controls

Forward Controls and Low Handlebars

Let me preface this section by saying that I am 6’4″ and this bike is guaranteed to fit smaller riders better than it fits me. Of course I know that forwards are a staple in the cruiser market, and on some bikes, I love them! Other bikes, like the Forty-Eight however, are set up with low bars and forward controls that make you feel like a folded omelet or a kid in gym class trying to touch his toes. Both the bars and the foot controls contribute to the low slung, aggressive look of the bike that we love, but the fit makes any sort of aggressive riding a challenge.

Harley-Davidson

2016 Harley-Davidson Sportster Forty-Eight dropped mirrors

The dropped mirrors

The low mirrors do wonders for the look of the bike at the handlebars. Tucked underneath the bars, they keep that area in front of you looking nice and neat. SO nice and neat, because it’s basically like you don’t have mirrors at all. I can only see my hands and the grips without having to duck around them to catch a glance at the mirror. More than once I found myself trying to make a quick lane change or see what was happening behind me and was caught off guard by the ineffectively positioned mirrors.

Harley-Davidson

2016 Harley-Davidson Sportster Forty-Eight with 16″ wheels

16″ Wheels

These might be the single biggest style factor on the bike. The 16” front and rear wheels give this bike the sort of vintage military/ raw brawler feel that has made it so popular, and they look absolutely killer. The large front tire does a little to soften the ride, but this falls into line with many of the other aspects of the bike. They LOOK killer, but they are in no way the best handling or performing option for this bike. The wide front tire makes the steering a little twitchy in the turns, which is an area that this bike needs a little attention anyway.

Staff

2016 Harley-Davidson Sportster Forty-Eight rear suspension

Suspension Upgrades

Sportsters in the past have always needed a little love in the suspension department, so I may have been the single happiest dude to hear the news that the 48 this year would be receiving new cartridge shocks in the rear and upgraded 49mm forks up front. “Oh my god, it’ll actually turn this year!” I thought. I still get wiggles when changing lanes on the freeway on this bike. Sure, it has a little to do with that front wheel/ tire, but the big jump in performance in this system turned out to be much smaller than I had originally thought it would be.

Harley-Davidson

2016 Harley-Davidson Sportster Forty-Eight seat

The Seat

The solo seat on this bike is another awesome style piece. It’s low, minimal, and keeps that insane visual line that the Forty-Eight is known for. But it’s one piece that drops out quickly, leaving your butt completely numb after about 15 minutes of riding. This is largely because with the forwards, all your weight rests on your butt and the stock seat is hard and thin. Sure does look good, but if you plan on doing some longer rides, this will need an upgrade.

As much as we criticize this model, we will still rubberneck 100% of the time one rides by. With a few modifications you could have yourself an incredible riding and DAMN fine looking motorcycle. Check Harley-Davidson.com for more information on this and their other killer 2016 models.

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Victory Octane Unveiled

Post author By Morgan Gales
Post date February 19, 2016

Victory Motorcycles

2016 Victory Octane 1200cc liquid cooled cruiser

It’s finally here! The Victory Octane that we have been teased with and waiting for for so long, and our first impression: it’s perfect. It looks like Victory’s Dyna. Like a high performance, liquid cooled 1200cc, 104hp brawler.

It looks like Victory made a new wheelie machine. It looks like a cruiser that you can throw into some turns. It looks fun as hell.

Victory Motorcycles

2016 Victory Octane

This is the bike inspired by project 156, that has brought about several custom concepts before showing up here in it’s final form. This is lighter weight, more nimble style of cruiser that we’ve been waiting for and we couldn’t be more excited.

Enjoy this gallery and stay tuned for more details on the Victory Octane!

Victory Motorcycles

2016 Victory Octane 1200cc liquid cooled cruiser right side profile

Victory Motorcycles

2016 Victory Octane 1200cc liquid cooled engine detail

Victory Motorcycles

2016 Victory Octane dash and control detail

Victory Motorcycles

2016 Victory Octane rear view

Victory Motorcycles

2016 Victory Octane front view

Stay tuned for more information on this awesome bike, and for more info from Victory, visit VictoryMotorcycles.com

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Yard Built VMAX: CS_07 Gasoline by it roCkS!bikes

Post author By staff
Post date February 18, 2016

Yamaha

CS_07 Gasoline Yamaha VMAX from it roCkS!bikes right side profile

Portuguese masters of the monocoque design (the body as one fluid piece) it roCkS!bikes are back for their third Yamaha Yard Built motorcycle, this one based off of the VMAX. The Portuguese duo from Oporto, Alexandre Santos and Osvaldo Coutinho, have been building beautiful custom machines as it roCkS!bikes since 2013, incorporating their trademark monocoque tank, seat and tail unit into each build.

Yamaha

CS_07 Gasoline Yamaha VMAX from it roCkS!bikes seat detail

For their latest Yard Built creation Osvaldo and Alex set out to give the VMAX an entirely new image, enhancing and exploiting its drag racing capabilities. As with all their builds, the ‘CS_07 Gasoline’ gets the trademark monocoque unit, although as the VMAX fuel tank is located under the seat, the unit features a false fuel tank. The unit is hand crafted from metal sheet and gives the bike a sleeker, slimmer and sportier profile with a retro style.

Yamaha

CS_07 Gasoline Yamaha VMAX from it roCkS!bikes left front profile

The drag racer influence is clear to see with the massive slick rear Mickey Thomson tyre and handmade stainless steel 4 -2 headers connecting to a custom free flow SC Project exhaust system with carbon silencers.

The CS_07 ‘Gasoline’ rides on custom made spoke wheels, 3.5×18 front with 120/70×18 Dunlop rubber and a 6.0×18 rear for the drag strip tyre. The stock tacho is kept but comes in a custom aluminium housing and the standard fuel tank is replaced with a beautiful custom aluminium unit with it roCkS!bikes motif. A metal hand crafted fairing ensures slippery aerodynamics for the ¼ mile and LSL footpeg adapters and clip-ons put the rider in the correct position. A Rizoma fuel cap and K&N air filter add some extra bling and Brembo brake and clutch master cylinders take it to the next level.

Yamaha

CS_07 Gasoline Yamaha VMAX from it roCkS!bikes back right

A host of Motogadget parts including handlebar grips, an m-switch and m-blaze turn signals ensure the custom work really stands out, and the handmade leather seat with it roCkS!bikes logo sets the standard.

Yamaha

CS_07 Gasoline Yamaha VMAX from it roCkS!bikes gas tank and gauge details

The build was completed at the end of 2015, the last of the year to celebrate 30 years of the VMAX. To mark the milestone a classic paint job was used to finish the bike. Taken from the 70s, the white, black and yellow colour scheme is pure icon, celebrating not just 30 years of the VMAX, but also 60 years of Yamaha! The bike was airbrushed and then gloss varnished in house by the builders.

Yamaha

CS_07 Gasoline Yamaha VMAX from it roCkS!bikes front fairing and headlight

Yamaha

CS_07 Gasoline Yamaha VMAX from it roCkS!bikes tail section and taillights

For more information on Yamaha and their Yard Built program, check out their website HERE.

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Yamaha Dealer Built: Round Two

Post author By Morgan Gales
Post date February 17, 2016

Yamaha

Rat Bike by PROMOTA MOTOR, S.L.

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times. We love dealer contests. It pits creative minds that look at these same bikes all day every day against each other. They dealer mechanics and builders have pulled out all the stops and come out with some absolutely incredible bikes this year. Based off of the Bolt, or XV950, XSR700, XSR900, SR400, XJR 1300 and the VMAX.

Yamaha

YZB-Edition XJR 1300 by Yamaha Zentrum Berlin

Yamaha seems to be doing everything right lately. Making a diverse line of affordable, stylish and great performing bikes. They just announced the price of the XSR900, which will be coming to the States this year and you can read about HERE.

Make sure you head over to Yamaha’s website and vote on your favorite bike from the contest and stay tuned for more in depth information on some of our favorite bikes!

Yamaha

Yamaha XJR 1300 MoBikes MK2 by MoBikes

Yamaha

Yamaha VMAX NOAH by UHMA BIKE

Yamaha

Yamaha XV950R Bolt R-Spec Fine Cut by SC MADRAS COMP SRL

Yamaha

Yamaha Bolt Phoenix Messenger by Phoenix Motorcycles

2016 Yamaha XSR900 bikes Cruising Other Motorcycle Blogs standard XSR900 XSR900 US Yamaha

Yamaha XSR900 US Price Announced

Post author By Morgan Gales
Post date February 17, 2016

Yamaha

2016 Yamaha XSR900

Yamaha. We were so so patient with you. We viewed your XJR 1300 from afar with hungry eyes. We watched as you released the XSR700 in Europe and gave us nothing. And finally, FINALLY, you’re throwing us one of your neo-retro bones!

The XSR900 is coming to the US, and not just that, but it’s hitting the market under $10k. $9,490 to be exact for the Matte Gray/Aluminum, which will be available from March 2016, and $9,990 for that insane bumble bee 60th anniversary yellow, which will be available from April 2016. For such a slight price difference on a first year model, I would 100% go with that kickass yellow, but thats just me.

Yamaha

2016 Yamaha XSR900 front details

Utilizing the three cylinder engine from the FZ-09, a power plant that other motorcycle magazines and reviewers have had nothing but good things to say about, the XSR900 comes out as a well rounded and approachable bike that hits that price point perfectly.

We see this bike as being a lower priced competition for the BMW R nineT and right in line with the new Triumph Bonnevilles. Love the standard lines of it and can’t wait to get the chance to ride one soon!

Yamaha

2016 Yamaha XSR900 in 60th Anniversary Yellow

2016 Yamaha XSR900 Specs

XSR900	SPECIFICATIONS
Engine	847cc liquid-cooled Inline Three, 12-valve, DOHC
Bore x Stroke	78.0 x 59.1mm
Compression Ratio	11.5:1
Fueling	Fuel-injection
Transmission	Six-speed
Clutch	Wet multi-plate; cable actuation
Final Drive	Chain; 16/45 gearing
Frame	Twin-spar aluminum
Front Suspension	KYB 41mm inverted fork with spring preload and rebound damping adjustment; 5.4 inch travel
Rear Suspension	KYB gas-charged shock with spring preload and rebound damping adjustment; 5.1 inch travel
Front Brakes	298mm discs with Advics four-piston calipers w/ ABS
Rear Brake	245mm disc with single-piston caliper and ABS
Tires	Bridgestone Battlax S20 120/70-17, 180/55-17
Curb Weight	430 pounds (claimed, ready to ride)
Wheelbase	56.7 in.
Rake/Trail	25.0 degrees / 4.1 in.
Seat Height	32.7 in.
Fuel Tank	3.7 gallon
MSRP	$9,490
Warranty	One year, unlimited mileage

For more information, visit YamahaMotorSports.com