Somehow in all the hype and limelight that surrounds custom bikes, the customer often gets lost. While more than a few bikes we feature on these pages are labors of love that are entirely funded, made and ridden by the builders themselves, a fair whack of them are funded by regular Joes like you or I…

Make no mistake. When you look back at the ‘cafe racer boom’ of the last ten years from the comfort of your anti-grav recliner chair circa 2048, this will be the bike that you will see. Because all of our fiddly little brat, scrambler and tracker nuances will be lost in time like a replicant’s tears in rain…

12 months ago Cleveland Cycle Works commissioned Kromworks to build them a board tracker powered by one of their single cylinder engines, now they’re doing it again with a thumping twin. With Andika Pratama on the tools the result couldn’t have been anything but spectacular and the finished product is this incredible…

At Pipeburn we’ve seen more stripped-back airheads than a college quarterback. So it takes something special for our jaws to hit the floor. And this, a 1976 BMW R100 by Belarusian shop Recast Moto, is pretty damn special. Recast are fans of the R series. “They’re classic airheads that have passed the test of time…”

After almost ten years of blogging about custom bikes, we’re pretty confident we could count the instances of builders who have made their own engines on one hand; even a hand that’d taken a trip through a rear chain and sprocket. Put simply, it almost never happens. Unless your Indonesia’s Pap N Mam…

EXCLUSIVE: What do you get when a builder at the top of his game and a manufacturer with a game changing new bike cross paths? In this exclusive interview with Rough Craft’s Winston Yeh – done in his home city of Taipei – we talked with one of Asia’s best customisers about his new project…

“I grew up in Montana fixing cars and rebuilding engines with my brothers,” reminisces the owner of Idaho Falls’ Bonneville Customs. “I have been building custom motorcycles for 8 years. I started out building bikes with my Father-in-law and friends in a small shop, which grew into Bonneville Customs is…”

One of the best damn things to happen to the custom scene in years is the rise of the developing world. Countries in South America, Central America and Southeast Asia have been smashing builds out of the park. Builds driven by a level of craftsmanship and dedication that leave westerners in their wake…

Forget about textbooks and teachers because the two things that will always capture a teenage boys attention are speed machines and wild women. Combine the two and you have a potent mix that will forever be burned into an impressionable young mind…

Interested in building yourself a sprint racer? If your brain works anything like Germany‘s Jo Hecht, then here’s a handy set of instructions for you to follow. Take one BMW R100R RS. Add an aircraft’s propeller spinner, a Yamaha XT500 tank, a Porsche RS spoiler, a Harley fender, a bunch of handmade aluminium parts…