FLASHBACK!

One of the great things about biking is the chance to express individuality. Whether it’s your choice of machine, your style of gear or where you go, you stand out from the crowd as an individual. Customisation is a vivid outlet for this trend, has been pursued with vigour ever since the motorcycle morphed from a mode of essential transport to a plaything in the early 1960s. To some (mentioning no names apart from Odgie’s…) customisation implies cutting, chopping and fabrication, which in turn means access to skills, machinery and talent not available to many.

But it need not be that complex. There is a thriving industry of bolt-on custom parts, decals and paints that can individualise a machine without access to the more complex procedures needed for heavy duty alteration from standard.

Returning after a 30 year hiatus, I first got tempted into the lighter side of customising when I created an Agostini tribute based on an MV Dragster. This was achieved entirely with paint, decals and a one-off seat cover to my design: no parts were harmed in the process! I farmed out some of the work, such as the fabrication of the Alcantara seat cover and the black ceramic coating of the exhaust. Other