Whenever Deus Ex Machina releases a new custom motorcycle, people sit up and pay attention. This Yamaha SR500 is the first SR Custom out of Deus’ relatively new Venice, California garage and knowing Deus, it’ll be the first of many.
Deus tends towards minimalism with their builds and this is no exception, all superfluous elements have been stripped off the bike and then essential components are sourced and fitted, with a focus on aesthetic sensibility and rideability.
In this case, Deus added a hand-fabricated aluminium tank, Tommaselli components throughout a Motogadget front light and an A&A rear brake and triple tree. When it comes to a bike for cruising the beach highways around southern California, this is bang on the money.
The Yamaha SR500 was first sold in 1978 and was the most popular single cylinder bike in Australia, Europe, Japan and North America for the first years of its production. It was replaced by the Yamaha SR400 which was sold right up until 2008 when tighter emissions regulations made the carburettor fed thumper no longer legal for sales in most developed countries.
Due to popular demand, Yamaha started selling an all new, fuel injected SR400 in 2010 although it hasn’t started selling it outside of Japan at the time of writing.
Check out the Deus listing for the bike here.
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
