Written by Andrew Jones
Like trying dual solos on a double neck guitar or attempting to make out with both the Polaski twins at once, building two custom bikes at once is an endeavour fraught with double the danger, stress and potential disaster. Make a bad call and you’ve got twice the mess to clean up. But get it right, and ultimate street cred awaits. It’s something that only the very talented or the very naive would attempt; and were here to say that for Dutch masters the Wrench Kings, it’s clearly the former. Teaming up with local gear store FortaMoto, they’ve created two Yamaha XV café racers that are so good, you’ll want to take a second look.

The two battered and bruised TR1s were tucked away in a corner of the FortaMoto shop, just waiting to be made into something cool. ?They would probably be called a barn-find by now on eBay?, Neal (founder of FortaMoto) says with a smile. ?We had been in touch with Joost from Wrench Kings and together we came up with the idea to build two bikes instead of one. Completely identical and both featuring the traditional horizontal café racer look, we decided that you need to keep doing crazy things and setting unreachable goals to keep up the challenge.? The foundation for the project had been laid.
FortaMoto really liked the idea of a classic café racer combined with modern components. The bikes needed to be bad-ass, a real eye-catcher for their motorcycle clothing store in Amsterdam, but it also...