A slammed Royal Enfield Interceptor from K-Speed, a gleaming Yamaha TX750 cafe racer from Chicago, a BMW GS given the supermoto treatment, and an inch-perfect Yamaha DT-1 restoration from Germany.

Yamaha TX750A by Ron George At a glance, the ‘speed blocks’ and perfectly formed bodywork on this Yamaha make it feel like an immaculately restored classic racer ? except it’s not. It’s actually a custom TX750A?a bike that Yamaha made to replace the XS650, but ended up being a total flop.
Most builders wouldn’t touch one with a barge pole, but Chicago-based hobbyist Ron George was bold enough to have a go.

Ron got the donor from a friend, who’d picked it up as an abandoned project but decided not to go ahead with it. The TX was in pretty beat-up shape, but luckily it was a TX750 ‘A’, and not the first-gen TX that had a notorious amount of issues. And as you can probably tell, much of his inspiration came from Kenny Roberts’ iconic YZR500. Rather than working off sketches and renders, Ron dove in head first to translate what was in his head into metal. All the bodywork is custom?and that’s especially remarkable,because this was Ron’s first time shaping aluminum. He didn’t stop there though, and the Yammie is sporting under-the-hood upgrades too.

The forks have been rebuilt, and there’s a completely custom (and adjustable) mono-shock setup out back, held up by a Yamaha R6 shock. The front brakes ...