“He pushed aside the tattered orange curtain over the sink. Over by the rusty old child’s swingset, the bike was still there. He was always relieved to see it in the morning, because it had no key ignition, just a toggle switch under the seat.”

Great stuff Zerk

I have a local motorcycle junkyard that has a couple xr500 23″ front drum wheels for sale. The thing is I don’t know how or who can make an axle for it. Joel do have the contact information of who made yours? Does anyone else know how to rig this up to a stock xs650 forks. Thanks for any and all help.

You’re right Ted, it rules to see all the crazy different ways these lowly little yamaha’s get built, from clean high dollar to low budget rusty old stuff. Keep the site going!

Did mom do the fart?

“Thanks for all the comments, there is something very freeing about not really caring if you screw your bike up because it only cost you $500, you’re right Broman. I would be freaking out to try stuff on a $10k panhead or something.” @ Joel – I think that is very true there’s definitely a lot more experimentation and willing to try crazy ideas out on a cheap xs {my opinion}. The economics of the situation also plays a huge part; If you have the mechanical aptitude and vision for 2K you can pretty much build whatever you have in your head with cheap parts on eBay. It all starts with a solid xs frame, motor and clean title.

I think the only thing missing is a Sweet fish tale exhaust setup. Rad bike..

@ Grease Nipples – “It puts me in a naked hippy chicks in a swimming hole frame of mind.” that reminds me of 05 MN- 2AM – hopping fences- chlorinated swimming pool – naked cannonballs and PBRzzzzzz.

Joel is the oldest of three siblings and has a brother and a sister.

Joel’s mother had him when she was fifteen. She is a breathless and sweaty, braless and flatulent, gas bag of a welfare mom who is addicted to TV dinners and soap operas when she is not tending bar. It is said that she was quite a looker when she was younger. She has a slight beard and wears a stained, purple polyester mumu around the trailer. She is not averse to being seen outside, watering the sickly flowers that struggle for life in the white painted truck tire that serves as a planter, out on the front “lawn.” Not that there’s a lot of traffic where they live, at the end of a dead end, dirt road.

Joel’s mother drives a pickup truck that a Hells Angel sold her for $200. Inexplicably, the Hells Angels are protective of her, and the other female hang-arounds don’t find her threatening, and she gets along there very well. She tends the bar at the Hells Angel’s clubhouse over in Oakland on the weekends. The HA’s probably like her because her till always balances. She’s been trying to get Joel interested in joining the HA’s, but he can’t afford a 1200cc Harley, and besides, he likes his life just the way it is. And, he reasons, at 140 lbs, he doubts he could survive the hazing process.

Joel’s mother is not exactly sure who his father is, but it might be Sonny Barger. Or somebody else, she’s not sure. Joel doesn’t look like Sonny at all.

Joel’s sister Tina, sixteen, spends most of her time down in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. She has met a really nice preacher named Jim Jones who is going to get her off heroin and save her from her life of prostitution. “He’s weird though,” she says. “He always wears sunglasses, even indoors.” Joel is relieved that his sister has finally found a man who can help her get her life together, and someone who is not at all interested in her for sex.

Joel’s brother is a Hare Krishna who has shaved his head, wears a saffron robe, and bangs a tambourine for spare change down on the waterfront of San Francisco. He lied about his age in order to get into the Hare Krishnas. He is seventeen. He has changed his name to something that Joel can’t even pronounce.

Joel was diagnosed manic-depressive after an incident in which he was forcibly removed, naked and dancing wildly, from a downtown park fountain one afternoon.

Making his way sideways down the cluttered hall of the trailer he shared with his mother, he stepped over a pair of unfamiliar cowboy boots outside his mother’s bedroom door. On the kitchen table were at least a half-case of empty Black Label beer cans, and a hubcap pressed into service as an ashtray, piled with unfiltered Lucky Strike butts. A Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket lay sideways on the floor.

Someone let out a great muffled fart behind the wall, and then, a giggle. He pushed aside the tattered orange curtain over the sink. Over by the rusty old child’s swingset, the bike was still there. He was always relieved to see it in the morning, because it had no key ignition, just a toggle switch under the seat.

Suddenly, the bedroom door swung open and bumped the bureau behind it. Out stumbled a shirtless, scraggly vagrant, who gave a gap-toothed smile. “Hi,” he said. Joel nodded.

Might as well eat breakfast, he thought to himself. He pushed aside the beer cans and made enough room for his cereal bowl and poured it full of near stale Cap’n Crunch.

I don’t know what the 23″ front wheel is, some 70s dirt bike stock wheel and hub. I had a 15mm stepped axle made to be able to run it. If anyone knows what my 23″ is let me know, it needs brake shoes bad! Back wheel is the stock ’73 xs 18″. I did rattlecan the tank and made the handlebars out of some old cut down drag bars.

Great photography, too, great alley shot. I kinda belongs parked next to an overflowing garbage can, but I mean that in a good way. I imagine the owner washing dishes in a Chinese restaurant just long enough to fill the tank and score a nickel bag, and he’s off.

I am wondering what the hubs on this bike are? I dig the combo a lot. And the tank is cool too. I’d leave it. The more wear and tear this thing gets the neater it will become.

~Bromaqn