We were lucky enough to spend some time with Kacey Elkins of Krossover Customs on our "Motorcycle Sherpa" trip he had won via one of our promotional trip giveaways. The trip covered an extreme 2 weeks of riding in the most versatile and amazing landscapes stretching across the Himalayan mountain regions of Nepal. During this trip we got to know Kacey and his skills as a rider and builder much better and he then went on after the trip to use those skills to make the ultimate adventure bike out of one of our favorite vintage Japanese build platforms, the Yamaha XS650. Only he set out to achieve making this like no other XS650 anyone had ever seen and we couldn't have been more excited to see it finally presented at our Old Bike Barn Crossroads bike show at the AMA vintage motorcycle days event. We had some time then to get a few shots of the build and talk with him a little more about why he chose this as his adventure build of choice.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a war that was brewing right here on our shores. It wasn't geopolitical, no. It was a war for horsepower and the Japanese motorcycle manufacturers of the day were duking it out for ultimate power supremacy.
We recently did a little bike run through Indiana out to a rural property with a group of fun loving riders from all different states and Matthew Nebel came down from Cleveland with a great group to get away for a bit. We noticed right away he wasnt riding your average XS650 and after a few pits stops and close inspection we realized that he had something pretty unique that needed some light shed on it so more people could come to dig this ever evolving patina proud Yamaha chopper. We shot some photos and talked with him a bit about why he chose this for his daily rider.
Michael prides himself on his budget builds. One of the ways he’s able to keep costs down is by capitalizing on his talent for utilizing found items in his his builds. For example, that’s a mini Heineken keg under the seat that houses the battery and electronics.
We recently did a feature on the crew behind central Indiana's vintage restoration shop Hoy Vintage Cycles and their lead tech Kim Wroblewski was nice enough to fire up his Yamaha XS650 rephased big bore street legal flat tracker and we couldn't wait to hear a little more about it. When you see this bike in person it's one of those things where it certainly looks fast sitting still and looks even faster going down the road but we wanted to know all the details of what makes it such a trip to ride so we sat down with Kim in the shop and got a little backstory on this really cool piece that was the combined effort between him and one of Vance and Hines top flat track specialists.
