If the thought of Firestone tires on a custom motorcycle makes your blood boil, avert your eyes now. Johnny Nguyen hasn’t just fitted his 1978 BMW R80 bobber with Firestones—he’s gone the whole hog, and fitted military-spec Firestone tractor tires. It’s turned the R80 into a real-life two-wheeled Tonka toy, and although it’s nowhere near…
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There are a few motorcycles in Ducati’s back catalog that would ruffle feathers if they were customized. Depending on how much of a purist you are, the 998 might just be one of them. It was the last model to carry the iconic 916’s aesthetic, but was powered by Ducati’s new, and much improved, Testastretta…
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Even though the Ducati 900 SS is some three decades old, we still see a lot of customs based around the 90° V-twin Desmo engine. A little online digging reveals the reason: over 25,000 examples of this model rolled out of the factory in Borgo Panigale. That’s an impressive number, and around half of Ducati’s…
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It’s not unusual for car guys to transition to motorcycle customization: after all, the skills required are similar. Johnny Nguyen proves that theory—he’s worked on cars most of his life, but lately he’s been building some pretty slick bikes. Johnny operates Upcycle Motor Garage as a one-man-band out of his workshop in Anaheim, California. This…
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We don’t see many Yamaha XS1100s around these days, which is a shame—it was an absolute beast of a machine. It was…
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If you want to earn a living in the custom business, scale is everything. Reinventing the wheel with every build will be…
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