Yamaha’s latest Yard Built project has returned to the workshops of Taiwanese builder Winston Yeh from Rough Crafts.
Following his build of the XJR1300, ‘The Guerilla Four’, back in 2015, Yamaha has chosen Rough Crafts for the first custom build of this year with the middleweight XSR700 as a base.
With no cutting or welding to the frame Winston has created not one, but two bikes. What are claimed to be simple-to-change kits transform the XSR700 in “under an hour” between a café racer style street machine, ‘The Corsa Scorcher’ and a dirt track ready scrambler style bike, ‘The Soil Scorpion’.
“This is our first ‘double-style’ custom build from one machine,” says Yamaha’s marketing boss for Europe, Cristian Barelli. “The build really proves for me the versatility of the XSR700 as a base for customisation. Whether you want to create a café racer, or a scrambler, this proves that you can do both, without losing the core soul and rideability of the original machine.”
“The XSR was an amazing base to start with,” adds Winston. “I love the tubular frame of the 700, and the power to weight ratio is perfect for a motorcycle. With the newly designed shorter frame and detachable rear frame loop you really don’t need to cut the frame to make a proper custom shape.
“I found myself having a hard time deciding should I go with clip-ons and make it a cafe racer, or with flat bars and make it a tracker, that’s where the idea came in: why not make the shaping as a body kit, and customers can use their own idea to mix and match suspension, wheels, brakes, handlebars, to build the bike they want?”
In an effort to make the kit as versatile as possible, Winston designed a set of triple clamps that can run a set of YZF-R1 forks along with an R1 axle, brakes and wheels designed for the R1 front end. He then used the same design rear wheel made for the 700 to get a direct bolt on front and rear custom wheel with inverted forks.
To achieve the one bike, two builds concept, he went to the Shark Factory for their X2E fully adjustable remote control digital suspension, making the set up adjustable on the fly for tarmac riding or muddy terrains.
The cafe racer version of the build features lightweight carbon-fibre wheels from Rotobox and clip-ons from Gilles Tooling, an Akrapovič titanium tail pipe for the YZF-R1 wraps up the performance side.
The scrambler version features forged wheels from Wukawa Industry Co., a handmade flat bar, and an Akrapovič titanium XSR700 high pipe modified to be tracker style. Whilst the cafe racer gets velocity stacks, the scrambler runs Sprint Filter waterproof filters to make it safe to play in the dirt. Both builds share custom brake set ups from Beringer.
The ‘Faster XSR’ body kit itself was made with a full carbon-fibre mono body with a smaller aluminium tank underneath, fully bolt-on without any modification, fabricated by MS Pro.
The detailing on the Corsa Scorcher café racer is pretty stand-out, with a Rough Crafts custom header on the exhaust. The brake calipers and rotors are standard XSR items feeding into the Beringer top set. A Wukawa Industry sprocket runs the rear, with Gilles Tooling rear sets and MS Pro foot pegs. MS Pro controls keep everything on point on the bars, next to Rough Crafts custom grips and Rough Crafts custom Fin Style Risers. There’s more signature in-house work with the Rough Crafts Grill type headlight, fuel cap and of course the carbon body unit. Last but not least Rough Crafts velocity stacks set off the motor itself.
The Soil Scorpion transformation sees the XSR standard rotor and calipers removed in favour of Beringer items on the Wukawa Industry forged wheels. The new riding position is helped by Rough Crafts signature Fighter Bars and MS Pro controls.
The build is finished with two different paint jobs by long time Rough Crafts collaborator Air Runner Custom Paint.
Source: Yamaha
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