Modern bikes are combined with the style of the 60s. It’s a perfect blend of British-style racing with the American bobber. It’s the work of Danish youngsters who will grab the attention of your eyes. When some of you choose to put a Cafe Racer style for a XVs. Here you will see, this is different. Prove it and see for yourself.
Mikael and Kris of Made Men Bikes is a pair of young men who try to build their big dreams. Originality is admirable, they build a bike with a different taste but still functional, can be ridden, and of course when talking about design of this XVS650 it will remind you to go back to the past. It’s a perfect concept.
Mikael and Kris of Made Men Bikes is a pair of young men who try to build their big dreams. Originality is admirable, they build a bike with a different taste but still functional, can be ridden, and of course when talking about design of this XVS650 it will remind you to go back to the past. It’s a perfect concept.
We have previously made several different Honda VLX 600, as it has a good platform to make a bobber. To try something new, we would try to build an air-cooled Yamaha and get rid of the large cooling radiator that sits on Honda, another thing was that we wanted to try was the driving performance on a bobber with drive shaft.
We found a nice Yamaha XVS650 about 300 miles away from our garage. I took the train to get to it, got there and test drove it and everything worked perfectly, I was going on a ferry to get home and I had been delayed, so the newly purchased stock XVS that looks like a ugly granny chopper.
Why that looks like a ugly granny chopper? because with a lot of cheap plastic chrome and ugly fake leather bags were pushed to the limit to catch the ferry and got run on like a mixture of a Ducati and a lane splitter. First when we got home to the shop, the plan was to and make a bobber with the original VLX frame and fork.
When we stripped down the bike the frame was left we decided. But, the next inspiration has come. We planned only to go all out and make the frame from soft tail to a rigid frame with a single back bone, cause with the original dual backbone we could not mount a gas tank as the way we had planned.
On this Yamaha DragStar XVS650 Project required approximately 70% of the frame had to be converted! When the frame was finished, we decided not to build the bike with the original VLX fork. And you may agree if I say “this is the highest level in building a custom motorcycle. This is the place where an art that appears.”
We made a new neck bearing kit that could accept Harley forks and mounted a DNA springer, a standard DNA springer hasa ugly wishbone. So, we contacted Three Two Choppers which is located in Fort Worth, Texas. And there we can got one of their super cool wishbone and stabilers kit. We were really lucky guy.
The first design plan we had to mount a frisco gas tank and an 8″ Z bar, but since we were lucky enough to win an internet auction on a classic British road racing fairing we could see that neither Z bar or frisco tank would fit on the bike. We tried various bars and ended up making a dragbar and bend it, so it fitted perfectly to the fairing.
We were looking for an AMF Rapido gas tank and found it at our good friend Johann Dizon who makes some cool of custom motorcycles in the United States. The seat and rear cowl was handmade. To make the drag look we went with a Goodyear Eagle front runner on the rear and got a 21” rim with a mini drum brake to the front.
For perfomance we went with the KJS manifold and a single 40MM Mikuni HS40 carburetor. The bike have a nice aggressive stance, and since we have converted it from front to middle controls you have a surprisingly comfortable riding position. This bike smells of drag and speed, but don’t go bet all of your money on the drag strip for this bike to win, but you need to remember it’s only a 650 cc.
