Think of Revival Cycles and you probably picture big budget, genre-smashing customs like the BMW Landspeeder. But Alan Stulberg and his crew are quite happy to work their magic on the humblest of machines. And they don?t get more humble than the early 80s Honda FT500 Ascot.
The ?FT? apparently stands for ?flat track,? but that was wishful thinking on Honda?s part: You can safely discount any notion of the Ascot tearing it up on the ovals. Rather, it?s a solid little commuter bike that you can pick up for less than $2,000 in the classifieds.

Making an FT500 Ascot look cool is a big challenge. But it has an electric starter, a big 500cc single cylinder thumper engine with lots of torque, a low curb weight, and a reputation for reliability. Most of all, it?s good choice for rookies because it?s nimble and super easy to fling around. That made it ideal for Revival?s client, a new rider who wanted a full custom. The brief was to build a lightweight, fun to ride motorcycle with just the right amount of flash and lots of subtle one-off features.

Revival had an old Ascot lying around that another builder had hacked up by cutting the frame backbone and leaving it unfinished. But it had a good motor and a title, so the Texas workshop decided to turn it into something pretty. Which is no easy task: The Ascot wasn?t exactly beautiful to begin with.
The first job was to fix the stamped steel frame lines, which quickly escalated into building an almost entirely new frame from scrat...