This 1981 Yamaha SR500 500 cc has a Benelli Mohave gas tank. The cafe racer averages 39 bhp and is a personal project bike by Jeff of Continental Tires. Paint is by Muzzy’s Graffix in Pennsylvania. This bike was designed and tuned to be ridden. Matt Wiley of Race Tech swapped out the stock fork internals for their Gold Valve System and tuned them to run with Progressive Piggyback shocks.
• Version 9 lighting
• For more lighting details: www.frankjbott.com/setup
Iran into Jeff and his amazing bike during the second annual Meltdown event in Hendersonville. Meltdown is a vintage motorcycle show held in North Carolina every spring, and Jeff, along with my team, helped sponsor the bike show.
Jeff was kind enough to bring his bike to the studio to be photographed during Version 9 of our lighting design. This bike was a particularly difficult subject to light due to its dark colors. Even with all the additional lighting equipment and larger softboxes in my current studio, it would still be a challenge to capture the simple beauty of this bike.
