Octogenarian's Himalayan Adventure

Travel writer and biker, Simon Gandolfi sets a record as the oldest man to have ridden a motorcycle over the Rohtang Pass in India's Himalayan State of Himachal Pradesh - his bike a 125 cc TVS Phoenix.

HARLEY SOFTAIL SLIM BY ROUGH CRAFTS

The Harley Softail Slim has two points in its favor: it’s a simple bobber-style bike with a vintage vibe, and it has a super-low seat height of less than 24 inches. It’s basically a Fat Boy with the fat trimmed off, and there’s ample grunt from a 103ci (1688cc) Big Twin motor.

This makes it the ideal platform for a custom build, and Winston Yeh of Rough Crafts has seized the bait. ‘Crowned Stallion’ is the latest build from Yeh’s Taipei workshop, and it’s so well finished it could almost be a factory bike.

Taiwan’s laws on motorcycle modification are strict, forcing Yeh to be subtle in his upgrades. The silhouette of the bike can’t change too much. But that hasn’t stopped him chopping the Softail’s rear frame and installing a custom tank and seat unit, flowing beautifully as one over the cylinder heads.

The vintage-style wheels are modern replicas from Exile Cycles, with a 16” up front and a mighty seven-inch wide 15” at the back. The tires are Indian Script and Avon AM21, which should offer better grip than most retro-style rubber.

Exile also provided the brake rotors and the open primary belt drive. The calipers come from Performance Machine, along with the foot and hand controls. The bars, risers and grips are all Rough Crafts parts.

I’d categorize this Softail Slim as one of those rare Harley customs that appeal to people who don’t usually like Harleys. It’s modern but slightly gothic at the same time—more evidence that Rough Crafts is one of the top custom Harley builders operating today.

Images by Bobby Ho. Check out our coverage of previous Rough Crafts bikes in the Archives.

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Kawasaki Café Racer by Seth Hensler

It’s always great to discover an amateur builder who’s talent is easily on par with the larger custom motorcycle garages, Seth Hensler is a stand-out example of this breed of home-based vintage café racer builder.
This bike started life as a 1978 Kawasaki KZ400, it was discovered by Seth 3 years ago sitting in pieces in the front yard of a Frat house he drove past each day on his way home from work, it wasn’t long before he went and knocked on the door, offered the guys a hundred bucks for it and wheeled it home to begin creating a café racer.
With a small machine shop in his basement Seth set about fabricating all of the custom elements on the bike, from the rear sets to the clip-ons, everything was made by hand in the winter of 2011. The fuel tank was pulled off an old Honda CB350F and the rear cowl was custom moulded from fibreglass using an old BMX helmet to get the shape.
By far and away my favourite feature of this particular café racer is the speedometer. You probably haven’t noticed yet, but it’s an airspeed gauge off of an old propeller plane. It’s fully functional and Seth installed the required pitot tube underneath the headlight on the left hand side to ensure accurate airflow readings. This is quite possibly the coolest thing I’ve seen on a motorcycle since Françoise Hardy.

The speedo is an airspeed gauge off an old propeller plane. And it actually works.

If you’re interested, you can follow the build process in detail from start to finish here, courtesy of the Do The Ton Forum, easily one of the best café racer forums on the intertubes.