Our Custom Tank art

It was a while back when I first approached BGM Den and in a panic asked him for a sidelight bulb for my, frankly awful, Kawasaki VN900.

I was selling it to a prospecting member of some distant and vaguely threatening motorcycle gang. I had promised them a perfectly working and perfectly MOTd metric cruiser to act tough on until they got a proper Harley.

I don't know the rules, I often just make them up as I go along, but I do remember that I had watched nearly all of Sons of Anarchy at that time and I was channeling Opie Winston particularly hard.

So, as Den reluctantly scrabbled around for a used sidelight bulb, I quietly pondered this crazy motorcycle shop I found myself in. As my eyes adjusted, I discovered it was inhabited by swarthy ner-do-wells from the furthest corners of the EU.

I started to look around, an SR500 jumped out, then a Honda CBX.. all the hits. I wondered what manner of crazy project I could convince Den to help me with, I had enthusiasm if nothing else, enthusiasm and a Yamaha XS650.

So, with my bulb in hand, I vowed to come back, and I sheepishly returned to the unnecessarily strict MOT man with news of my newfound illumination.

The prospect looked on, impressed as I ragged the ever-loving tits off the poor Kwaker, it had been cosseted during its time with me, but now we had to convince a small entourage of one-percenters that it could muster the kind of howling v-twin racket that they were accustomed to. Convince them it did, I had fitted twin straight-through pipes, and this metric bruiser was making all of the 55bhp that its power commander commanded, as I screamed not towards some rowdy clubhouse, but Londis car park, I could almost feel the valves floating as they were asked to put on one last show for the boys.

Positioning myself to craftily block the view of any newly acquired, vibration-assisted oil leaks, I was met with grunts of approval from the walking self-esteem issues that had assembled. We had passed the test it seemed, and one wobbly test ride around the car park later, I was down to one bike and a whole bunch of nagging doubts; I had “built” that bike in my garage with an Amazon shopping list and a Dickies lumberjack shirt.

Later I took my bent, imported, weird looking XS650 to Den, and we hatched a plan to build a very cheap flat tracker, and when I say cheap I mean cheaper than a Kawasaki VN900. One upshot of this was that I couldn’t afford to paint the bike, and Den, knowing that I loved to drop my starving artist credentials, asked if I would hand paint the tank with a white Sharpie as we had both seen hipsters doing this kind of thing in much hipper places than Stratford upon Avon.

In it’s final iteration, it belies it’s humble and rather chaotic BEGINNINGS; it managed to do a pretty stand up job at the Bike Shed show, little did the crowds of admirers know, that this idea was born, as all the best are…
with a LIGHT-BULB moment.

The old Yamaha XS650 v2, trying to blend in at the skate park

So now here I am, offering you the same. You too can have your tank hand-ruined by me, in a variety of exciting styles…. but mostly in white sharpie as that’s what we got and we got it good. If you would like to be as cool as us, just contact us and let us know your thoughts and dreams.