Forty years ago, Yamaha made a brief foray into the flat track scene in the States with its XV750 race bike. Like most go-fast, turn-left machines, it was a bit of a looker?and provided inspiration for this phenomenal street tracker from Takashi Nihira.
Nihira-san runs Wedge Motorcycle, one of the top Japanese custom shops. He?s won multiple awards at the Yokohama Hot Rod Custom Show and was tapped by BMW to participate in their G310R custom project.

This XV750 is a commission, from a customer who?s a fan of the XV750 flat tracker that Yamaha campaigned in the AMA Grand National Championship in the early 1980s.
That race project lasted just a couple of years, despite Yamaha shipping 75 engines to the States. They made them available to privateers for just $2,000, and hired Kenny Roberts and Mert Lawwill for the team.
The engines were not short of grunt, and were rumored to be in the same 80 hp ballpark as contemporary XR750s.
The donor bike for this build was a 1981 Yamaha XV750 Special. In stock form this model is a slightly ungainly ?custom? V-twin with shaft drive, and bloated bodywork that sends wet weight into the region of 500 pounds?a far cry from the low and lithe machine that Wedge have created.

Wedge?s customer already owned the XV750 before he dropped it off at the workshop in the western suburbs of Tokyo. To make the build easier, the client also helped search for hard-to-find parts in the USA, and imported those parts into Japan himself.
Wedge started ...