Aermacchi M65 Leggero, Cafe Racer by Roland Sands Designs

Put Roland Sands and Café Racer in the same sentence often result in something you either like or dislike no middle ground. The combination also usually ends in a motorcycle with a lot of horsepower, cubic centimeters, and gold details that either fit the bike or not. But with this last example he has completely blown me away. And not just because the Harley Davidson Roland has laid his hands on is a small moped from the days of AMF / Harley-Davidson in which the North American brand put its name to a good collection of two-stroke motorcycles made in Italy.

It turns out that a few months ago, while They were looking for spare parts for the Harley Davidson Sposter that they were manufacturing for Travis Pastrana They stumbled upon this little moped in a garage under a pile of junk. After paying for it 700 dollars They took it to the workshop, where it was hanging around for five months in which no one had just imagined what they wanted to do with it. His moment came a week before attending Born Free, a Custom concentration in the USA. While they were thinking about making a Custom Scooter, they stumbled upon the Harley and got down to business almost instantly.

No time for many flourishes, or paintings or fancy dress, rescued some 21-inch wheels from the seventies (complete even with the tires) and began to adapt the original bike. They manufactured the semi-handlebars, adapted a Yamaha TZ 250 footrest, lengthened the swingarm to fit the 21-inch wheel, adapted a disc and the brake caliper of a Moto Cross motorcycle. They also made the exhaust pipe, attached a filter screen to the carburetor, and removed a few more parts. The work ended by repositioning the taillight on one side and fitting some aluminum side plates. In total some 300 dollars plus.

The final result is what we see, which also won a prize in the concentration. And the conviction that Roland Sands and his team are capable of customizing a Harley Davidson of any displacement and doing it successfully. I would like to have the resources of these people. And from what you see in the video, they haven't had a bad time working on it.