In the mid 70s, the Yamaha RD 200 delivered more fun than a small capacity motorcycle had any right to. A compact two-stroke, it could cruise easily on the highway and, given a long enough straight, creep past 80 mph (130 kph).
The heyday of little two-strokes is long over?in the road going sense, at least. But memories take longer to fade, and Portuguese builders Pedro and Filipe Costa have dug deep into their past to create this stunning custom RD 200.

?A taste for motorcycles since childhood led us to build this machine from scratch,? says Pedro. ?I’m the mechanic and my brother Filipe is the welder at our C.Custom Garage workshop, and our idea was to build an unpainted motorcycle.?
Pedro and Filipe like to use a multitude of metals for their bikes, including aluminum, bronze, copper, tin and stainless steel. And that confidence shows in every crease and weld on this Yamaha.
The base bike was a 1973 RD 200, making it one of the earliest in the Yamaha series. In their workshop in the bustling town of Vila Nova de Famalicão, Pedro and Filipe immediately removed and dismantled the engine, and stripped the rest of the Yamaha down to its component parts.
The brothers are members of that small and exclusive club of builders who can create a motorcycle from the ground up: virtually the only stock parts left on the finished bike are the motor, the wheel hubs and the (excellent) drum brakes.

Rather than refinish the existing frame, C.Custom have built a completel...