David Yetman was born in 1938, and he fell in love with motorcycles as a military serviceman stationed in Japan. He specifically appreciated the “high level of performance” that Japanese manufacturers were able to extract from small bikes. Years later, he crashed his Honda CB77 and ruined the frame. He couldn’t afford to replace the frame, but instead of totaling the bike out he just…designed his own!
To be fair, by that point Yetman was also a mechanic at a shop that built Formula Vee race cars, so he used the spaceframe principles he learned with the race cars and created an impressively light frame that was suitable for racing. A stock frame weighs nearly 30 pounds. Yetman’s designed weighed 8. For more information, check out Ed Youngblood’s MotoHistory (you’ll have to scroll down to 2/26/2011). Over nine years, Yetman sold less than 400 frames. That’s what makes this example so cool, though the seller has done his or her best to ruin the charm by using some horrible photos. This example is said to be running with rebuilt carbs, an oil change, and a custom fuel tank made of fiberglass.
Photo from Ed Youngblood’s Moto History
Find this Super Hawk 305 for sale in High Falls, New York for $2,500 here on Craigslist.