Without overly championing beards, hipsters and grinders, we’re convincing aficionados of Yamaha’s Yard Built series. The latest addition is this XV950 Café Bob: ‘The Face’ by German builder Dirk Oehlerking of Kingston Customs, and another class example of how to transform a dreary, budget bike into something fucking cool (if you like bobbers)…
The Face is another take on Yamaha’s ever-popular Sport Heritage range, using the XV950 as a base without any fabrication to the original frame. Sitting alongside a few LSL aftermarket components, most of the mods are in-house parts, including the levers, brackets and hand-stitched seat.
Aside from the striking profile, the attention to detail is sublime: the spark plug occupying the headstock, the transparent filter cover, and the yellow goggle ‘screen’. Whitewall Shinkos (which definitely need to break into the sportsbike market) and a Megaphon exhaust also look spruce.
Dirk: “The XV950 has been a really great bike to work on. It’s very easy to strip to the base and start working up again and there are so many possibilities for a different look. I Think the XV is perfect as both a bobber, but also as a café racer so I wanted to combine the two and show that you can blend them for one original bike. It’s also been a really great challenge to create custom parts that we can then make available for anyone who wants to make their own ‘Face’.”