Black Majic

BLACK MAJIC

American FLYERS

Lower than hell, but way more pretty

A MAN'S GOT TO MAKE A living. But a man also has to express himself. So when Yamaha calls up Jeff Palhegyi and asks for an "official" custom bike project, he sits quietly and listens to directions (mostly) and builds what the Tuning Fork Folks want (mostly), with a little riff here and there that might slip by the legal department. Hey, building corporate customs is a big part of what his San Diegobased company, Palhegyi Designs, is all about.

So the bills get paid and the family gets fed. But you’ve got to feed your soul, too, which is where this beautiful Yamaha Warrior, dubbed “Black Majic” comes in.

“It’s my typical story,” Palhegyi says. “I build them the ones they want, and then I build the ones I want.” What he wanted was low, low, low-as low as he could go and still be able to handle the rough-and-tumble of real-world streets.

“Any lower than this and they’re just no fun to ride,” says Palhegyi of this study in ebony, which runs maybe four inches between its lowest parts and the tarmac.

After nailing the lowdown, the rest was pretty wide-open.

“I basically wanted to start from scratch on my own seat and fenders, reshape the fuel tank and use a 250mm rear tire,” he explains.

So after massaging sheetmetal into the elegant curves you see here, and getting the tiny black suede seat contoured to suit, Palhegyi turned toward lowering the standard Warrior fork and finding a way to make the fat rear meat fit. This involved the making of a custom chromoly-steel tubu-

lar swingarm, one of the coolest pieces on the bike. Palhegyi wasn’t satisfied with just the custom arm, though, so the 8.5-inch-wide Performance Machine Monaco wheel was fitted with one-off parts to allow a drive-pully-side brake mount, leaving the right totally clean. Very nice stuff.

PM supplied much of the other parts, including the hand and foot controls, mirrors, brake discs, six-piston front caliper and rear pulley, pretty much all of it chromed.

The Warrior’s 1670cc V-Twin got a thorough cosmetic makeover with a pile of billet parts from the Yamaha catalog, plus the addition of a Road Star transfer-case cover. Why use the latter piece? It’s chrome. Inside, the engine is all stock, although custom headers feed what was a prototype megaphone that’s now being produced by Bub.

Why just a pipe and no motor hop-up?

“The Warrior isn’t slow stock,” says Palhegyi of the 76-horsepower/97-footpound mill. “Then, when you take away a lot of the suspension travel and combine it with the riding position and seat this thing’s got, all of a sudden it feels really fast. You can clutch it and lift the front wheel pretty easy because the suspension is so stiff the chassis doesn’t suck up any of the power.

It’s got plenty of motor.”

Ultimately, Palhegyi sold the bike to a Seattle motorcycle dealer after displaying and riding it a few times. After all, a finished project is really no project at all, and the soul gets hungry for creativity once again. The plus side in this case is that the family got fed, too.

-Mark Hoyer