The combination of dual sport tires and clip-ons on this Yamaha will probably leave some of our readers clutching their chests. And builder Art Henschell is totally down with that.
He’s even emblazoned this Yamaha WR500 with a big, fat warning label: ?HELLION.? We think it’s hella rad, so we got in touch to find out more.

Art runs One-Up Moto Garage in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He’s only in his mid-twenties, but he’s been wrenching since the age of seventeen?and even paid his way through college with moto work.
It took him a while to tackle a big, air-cooled two-stroke through?despite harboring a love for them.

?When I was (too) young,? he tells us, ?I rode around on a PE400 that was way older than me. It taught me a lot about respecting one’s elders.? Years later, Art found the donor for this project: a 1992 Yamaha WR500 ZD. ?I?d never heard of the model until I saw this one,? he says, ?and then I knew I had to try to build it.?

His first challenge was to get it registered for road use: ?I’m sure in most states that concept would be pie in the sky, but in good ole Arkansas the sky is the limit, and all pies in it. So once a clean street legal title arrived, I started designing.?
With help from fellow One-Upper Micah Welsh, Art began stripping the bike down to the basics.

Rather than start with a sketch or rigid plan, Art finds a gas tank that works with the lines of the engine and the frame. In this case, a 1981 Suzuki DS100 tan...