World’s most extreme XS650
Venerable Yamaha gets dragged into the future by Italian artisan
It’s often the case that the wildest customs come from the sheds of enthusiastic amateurs because they can afford to spend years creating something outstanding. And here’s a case in point: a Yamaha XS650 like no other. Instead of working in harmony with Yamaha’s classic air-cooled parallel twin and using the original frame, amateur custom builder Simone Conti binned the chassis and hid most of the engine behind a sharp-edged fairing he painstakingly made himself.
‘It took me one and a half years to build in my spare time,’ Simone tells Bike. ‘Mostly I worked on Saturdays and in the evenings. All my friends told me that it would never be beautiful because the engine has totally different lines to the rest of my design but I thought they were wrong and that it could work well.
‘I used the engine [from a 1972 XS] because it is beautiful and iconic, and I was sure it would be good for my idea. But in terms of styling, I follow my heart and I used the fairing to cover parts of it so it seems visually less heavy.’
Throwing away everything apart from the engine and the wheels, Simone was left with a lot of fabrication to get on with. He made the nose cone, fuel tank and the fairing panels from aluminium, the new frame – again from aluminium – and even the swingarm. ‘I prefer to build everything from scratch. The difficult part was making sure all the parts I made didn’t increase the weight too much.’
The frame is made of two parts: the rear section is two aluminium plates Simone designed on a computer aided design (CAD) package then had cut with a computer numerically controlled (CNC) laser; the front is welded tubes. ‘When I had the parts, I assembled them on my motorcycle template bench [ie, a jig]. I made the yokes by hand on a milling machine.’
The fabrication extremes Simone went to are deeply impressive. He even made footpegs and levers: ‘I took aluminium tube, then bent it and used a press to get an oval shape. The heel guard and levers are cut with a CNC laser.’
Naturally he made the exhaust himself, bending and welding
‘I build bikes for the joy of seeing my ideas come to life’
45mm tubing, then made the silencers from aluminium and carbon fibre tubing. Simone didn’t have much experience of making bespoke carbon fibre parts, but wanted a few dotted around the bike so he fabricated the parts in aluminium and handed them over to his friend Ivan Motta. He turned the rear wheel cover, front disc scoop, rear hugger, exhaust heat shields and air filter covers into carbon. ‘Ivan worked with Devils Kiteboarding and they made the moulds from my aluminium parts.’
So what’s it like to ride? ‘I haven’t ridden it yet,’ says Simone. ‘I finished it the day before a motorcycle exhibition I had entered it for and haven’t done anything with it since. I build bikes as a hobby and do it for the joy of seeing my ideas come to life, so I don’t want to sell it. I think I will probably exhibit it in my home.’