Yamaha V Max Custom By Roland Sands Design
Last month we told you about the three builders Yamaha chose to modify the new Vmax. Each builder went his own way and this is what Roland Sands came up with. Most impressive, is the extremely short time frame each builder had, only 3 weeks!
When you see the results, you have to respect the experience being brought to the task, novice builders would be in the design and mockup stage when these guys were rolling out their finished bike. As Roland explains in the video, he's got a lot of ideas floating around in his head all the time, so when this challenge came up, it was time to quickly apply what he knew.
The RSD version was quite a redesign, the fuel tank was moved below the swing arm, clip-ons were installed, the exhaust was re-routed, body work massaged and, by Roland's estimate, about a hundred pounds was removed. It almost makes the big Max seem sporty.
His initial sketch is close to what they built and, to my eye, what he turned out is a lot more pleasing than the stock unit in just about every way.
He accomplished what many builders fail to do when working on the Vmax, he made it look different while still focusing your eyes on the engine, which is what the Vmax is all about. If you go to the original Vmax Hyper Modified link, you'll also see that the other two builders, Ludovoc Lazareth and Marcus Walz, didn't redesign the Vmax to the level achieved here. As I said, from start to finish in 3 weeks, wow. Nice job, Roland!