The main reason I post less frequently on Bike-urious nowadays is because I’m a bit swamped over at Iconic Motorbikes. So I figure the least I can do is occasionally show you guys what we’re up to at the hangar!
If you’re the social-media type, my partner Adam is constantly sharing updates over on Instagram. Regardless, here’s what I thought was noteworthy on Wednesday, August 31st!
My day started with a rare situation – me behind a steering wheel. It was for a forklift as we had a 20′ container of bikes that came in from Japan – nowadays I drive forklifts more than I drive cars. Also, if you work for a company that makes electric forklifts, please call me because I’m sick of our old propane unit and will gladly upgrade!
Most of the bikes are stuff we brought in to sell (a few RC30s, Paul Smarts, a RC45, etc). But one bike was for a client that asked for our help importing something he found for himself – a Yoshimura Tornado. These were Suzuki GSX-R400s that Yoshimura took over and built into specials. This one’s going to need some work, but the owner bought it for himself as a fun project. Can’t wait to see how it ends up!
A significant portion of the container (in quantity, not volume) was seven 50cc bikes, six of which were YSR50s. One of them was a YSR50 “police” bike, which is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen in my life. Vy (the actual greatest thing I’ve ever seen in my life) happened to stop by today, and she was excited to find a bike that her 5’1″ frame was perfectly sized for. This bike is rough and will need some work, but I can’t wait for our shop to clean it up. If you ever need proof that I’m weird, my love for this bike should do it.
Over on the auction site, we had four listings go up – a Yoshimura exhaust for a Honda RC30 and three bikes. The Yosh pipe made me very nostalgic for my old RC30, which had a carbon fiber Yoshimura exhaust:
I miss this bike.
The auction bikes were:
2020 KTM Duke 790 – this one sounds amazing and has a few good upgrades.
1986 Suzuki GSX-R750 – a 1-owner bike with the incredibly rare Suzuki/Yoshimura factory hop-up kit.
1994 Honda VFR750F Custom (RC30 Tribute) – a super interesting build from Australia. I rode it home and back to work last week and I’d say it’s faster than an actual RC30 in a straight line but it doesn’t feel the same. If I had to guess, it’s 70-80% of the RC30 riding experience but it’s way cheaper if something bad happens and when you ride by a window or a large black vehicle and catch your reflection, it sure looks 100% like a RC30…if that matters to you.
Halfway through the day, Adam and I stopped over at Beach Moto to pick up some bikes that we had on display for an open house they had over the weekend. We had four bikes on display so we took the shop van over. The shop van doesn’t have enough seats!
We brought the Tesi H2, RC45, a custom Ducati 750 (not pictured), and the Tesi 3D (not pictured).
I had previously swapped out bikes a couple of days ago, so I rode my Megamoto back to the shop.
Beach Moto has a very cool early Aprilia RSV on display (they’re open to selling it) with a livery that wasn’t officially offered in the US.
Back home at Iconic, I took a quick tour of the shop as we have some interesting bikes on the lifts:
Steve’s working on a Honda NR750 that we sold a few weeks ago. The bodywork had been repainted previously and it wasn’t great, so we sent it out for another respray and now the bodywork is back for reassembly.
I joked earlier about how great the YSR50 police bike is, but Olly’s actually got one of the most incredible bikes I’ve ever seen on his lift: a Honda RC213V-S. We sourced a 0-mile example for a client and Olly’s been assembling it with the race kit over the last couple of days. Later in the day we’d end up firing it for the first time!
Some of the race kit parts:
Alex is putting some finishing touches on a 269-mile GPz750 Turbo that we sold, it’s off to become a museum piece.
Angel’s replacing the battery and taking care of some minor odds and ends on a Petronas FP1 that we sold, it’s off to Australia.
Well, that was a very abbreviated day over at my shop, Iconic Motorbikes! Let me know if this was interesting at all to see if it’s worth doing again…