The Bishop XS – By Vintage Customs

By Vintage Customs

Jay – I dont know what to say about this bike.. I had planned on having The Drifter through early March for Bike Week here in Daytona Beach FL, but I had a guy come down from MD and buy it. I couldn’t argue with that so I had two full months to have another bike built and road tested/ready for Bike Week. I grabbed another old gnarly XS out of my collection and started cutting. The response from my previous ’80 XS “The Royal” had been so overwhelming I decided to build another one in a very similar style.

I already had on hand the tank, seat, mufflers & tires so all I had to do was replicate the hardtail frame and come up with a few extra goodies and I was ready to go. I decided to try a more extreme paint job on this one. My best estimate is about 25 hours of taping, re-taping & back-taping all of those lines through three different colors. The result was well worth it.

I needed a good reliable rider because this year I planned on doing a lot more riding to the events unlike the past years where I usually trailered two bikes at a time to the shows along with a truck full of friends.

So, the motor was fully rebuilt, as always, but this time I threw in a Pamco ignition and a PMA charging kit from XS Charge. The bike ran great though everything from pouring rain to idling for long periods in the 80+ degree temps. I couldnt have been happier! Riding this bike was a blast!

I plan on building maybe one or two more XS’s this year but I’ve got a few non XS bikes (SR500 & RD350) lined up for the rest of this year. So look out!