This 1926 Excelsior Super X factory-built flat tracker would be a special bike even if it wasn’t for its A-list former owner, in fact if you know your motorcycle racers this bike has two A-list former owners – Bud Ekins and Steve McQueen. Steve McQueen, Bud Ekins, and the Excelsior Super X Ekins bought this bike…
Lloyd Brothers Motorsports have been building some of the quickest flat trackers in the world for over 25 years, but this project wasn’t built for dirt oval competition, it was built as a father son project by company co-founder (and Dad) David Lloyd, and his son James. The Beginning The project began with a 1987 Honda…
Editor’s Note: The new FTR 1200 has now been released. You can click to see the Silodrome Cheat Sheet for the new Indian FTR 1200 and the FTR 1200 S. The Indian FTR1200 is a perfect fit for Paris-born Dimitri Coste, a photographer, motorcycle racer, and film director famous for his larger than life personality,…
Editor’s Note: This article was written by Bryan Fuller of Fuller Moto. When possible we like to bring you articles written by the builder – to offer unique, unfiltered insight into their process. Flat Track racing has a long, rich history and just like most sports, as it evolves it continues to push limits. Part…
The Yamaha OW72 looks remarkably similar to the Yamaha XS650 on which it’s based, but this similarity hides a staggering amount of engineering that was poured into the OW72 by the Americans, Australians, and Japanese in an attempt to catch the Harley-Davidson XR750. The project for the Yamaha OW72 began in 1975 at the behest…
The Indian Chieftain isn’t a motorcycle that many associate with going sideways on dirt. Fresh from the factory the Chieftain has a wet / dry weight of 821 lbs / 855 lbs and is designed as a highway cruiser – developed with the American open road in mind. Roland Sands made the unusual decision of…
Jay Springsteen is considered by many to be the greatest flat track racer in history, his remarkable career spanned almost 30 years and he won 43 Grand National Championship dirt track victories, as well as the 1975 American Motorcyclist Association Rookie of the Year award and 3 consecutive AMA Grand National Championships in 1976, 1977,…
Anyone who knows anything about flat track racing will be able to tell you stories about “King” Kenny Roberts and his dominant performances aboard his Yamaha XS650, with its distinctive Yamaha Yellow paint with black speed blocks running down either side of the tank and tail. In the years since Roberts left the dirt oval…
Benjie’s Cafe Racers is an Italian custom motorcycle workshop run by Benjie Flipprboi, he’s a man who has gained no small amount of respect in recent years by building wildly imaginative custom motorcycles with a strong function-before-form aesthetic. That said, the form side of things is hardly wanting. The custom Ducati you’re looking at here…
The Yamaha XS650 was launched in 1968 and at the time, it had the most advanced parallel twin motorcycle engine in the world. It used unit construction (both the engine and transmission are part of the same casing) and had a horizontally split crankcase for ease of construction (and repair), it also had a SOHC with 2-valves per…
AMA’S Flat Track Racing Young Matadors: Jay Springsteen is an vintage documentary about one of the most successful and beloved flat track racers of all time. Springsteen began racing professionally in 1975 and convincingly won the AMA Rookie of the Year award. He went on to confound the field and win three back-to-back AMA Grand…
I sometimes upset certain types of vintage motorcycle enthusiast by telling them that the Harley-Davidson XR750 is one of the most beautiful bikes ever made, I know it’s not for everyone but its clean, function-first design always stops me in my tracks and makes me wish I had the $20,000+ required to add it to the…
