*NEW* VISIONS - Actively Updated and unfiltered stories

"Visionary Cycles in San Jose are a terrific resource for us old school bikers. I ride a 2015 Yamaha SR400, kick start only, oil in frame, air cooled thumper. One of Yamaha's two best bikes, the other being my old 1983 XS650SK. If you're noticing a pattern you are correct. I bike British. I own a Bonnie, a T100. But I use my SR puddle jumper to go to work as I don't, and won't, own a cage and starting a 900cc bike to go 2.5 miles is silly. So I ride my SR400! I got this amazing little bike from Cross Country Powersports in Metuchen, NJ. My friend Henry Martinez, who runs the Used Department, said. "I love to see people try to start it." It is a real gem and there is a learning curve when it comes to riding it. It is so worth it. That said, if you need parts you need Visionary Cycles. They carry the full line of Kedo gear. I believe strongly that loud pipes save lives so I swapped out my stock Yamaha pipe for a Kedo universal silencer. The stock pipe weighed 16.4 lbs! My Kedo weighs 1.64kg (3.6 lbs) and sounds great. I love Kedo (I am a Volksdeutscher, ethnic German, and they are my homies). They make great stuff. And Visionary has their catalogue and ship out the parts FAST at a fair price. Their comms are also good. You write to them and they write back. What's more, if you need something, they will make it happen. Ride Safe (or as us geezers said back in the day, AMF).

I love Visionary Cycles and so will you."

"I started this project in June of last year with one goal: build something I could rip around town that paid homage to my love of the 1970s vintage Japanese motorcycles of my childhood. 
The clear choice was Yamaha’s big single — the bike that won the first Paris-Dakar Rally, then came back and won it again the next year. Reliable, simple, torquey, and iconic: the Yamaha XT500.
In the end, I scored two 1979 TT500s — the motocross version. One was basically a box of parts in a rolling frame. The other was an abandoned flat tracker with a seized motor that had sat through 15 rainy winters with water pouring straight into its single cylinder.
But that flat tracker had the holy grail: a street-legal California title and current non-op registration. The roller had an engine that looked okay and had compression… but zero history.
After nearly a year of wrenching, this is the result. I’m beyond hyped on how she came out.  Having Kedo and Visionary Cycles and all the parts available and shipping from a few zipcodes away has been a huge help. 
She rips. Gobs of low-end power. So fun to ride."

"My name is Grant H. from Springfield, MO. This is a 1980 XT500G, which I inherited from my maternal grandpa when he passed away in 2021 from COVID. I was living abroad at the time, and due to all the travel restrictions, I wasn't able to go to his funeral.

He bought it from a guy he worked with in the '80s. The guy's name was Roy, so when he brought it home and told my grandma, she said, "I'm going to kill Roy!" He was tickled by the name, which I'm assuming was a nod to the WWII "Kilroy" character, and so he named it "Kill Roy." He then kind of converted it to a TT. Everything was stripped; he put a Malcolm Smith desert tank on it and rode it through the Iowa countryside and in southeastern Missouri every year with his brothers. They always joked about how big the tank was and how they ended up siphoning from it when they were out riding.

In May of 2025, my mom died after a few years with cancer. I decided then that I needed some therapy, so I took to the wrench. I had changed my oil, my grandpa being the one who taught me, but I had never rebuilt anything. I had been wanting a motorcycle for ages, so now it was time.

I had a choice: get it running for some fun, or go all out. I chose to go all out. I bought both the Clymer and Haynes manuals and went to work. I had a vision of where I wanted to go with it and learned everything along the way. Without KEDO and its US suppliers, it would have been nearly impossible to bring that vision to life.

I stripped the entire thing, disassembled the engine, along with every nut and bolt. I had the frame, engine case, and wheels powder coated. Then I reassembled everything and got to work. I'll spare the gory details, but here are the highlights:

- ATHENA 87.50mm piston kit

- Mikuni TM36-68 carb

- YSS Ecoline Stereo Shock Absorbers

- Power Dynamo Generator Complete Kit

- m.unit blue from Motogadget + battery (he didn't even have an ignition, just coil to magneto closed circuit), indicators, tail light, headlight and handswitch.

- KEDO X-Trapp 3" Exhaust System

...and thousands of dollars more in virtually every part of the bike, plus all the tools I didn't have. Of course, he didn't have any paperwork for it, so I took the time to get a Declaratory Judgment from my county circuit court to get a title issued, and it's all road legal now. I went the whole way!

This bike is a tribute to the amazing man I got to call my grandpa. It was fun seeing what he had done and fabricated himself, and I can't tell you how much I learned along the way. It's not perfect, but boy, I'll ride the hell out of it."

"Hello fellow motorcyclists, my name is Carlos Orellana A., from the city of Antofagasta, Chile, and I consider myself a fanatic and lover of the Yamaha XT500 motorcycle in all its versions.

I would like to share my story about this beautiful motorcycle, which I've known since my childhood back in the 80s. I never owned one, but I saw them riding around town back then—impressive, beautiful, and with that striking sound that I compared to a helicopter, which made me turn my head to look at them. I think that's what made me fall in love with them, and from then on, I resolved to own one someday. That wasn't easy, since, as we know, over the years this machine naturally became extinct with modernization and the arrival of new motorcycles and technology. But with patience and perseverance, after years of searching, I achieved my dream, finding it abandoned and stripped in the backyard of a house in another city in my country."

"Naturally, it was in terrible condition, but at least having it was something. I was happy and grateful to God for the opportunity, and I decided to begin its restoration without rushing, to bring it back to life. I enjoyed the process from beginning to end (about a year), fearing I wouldn't find the parts I knew I would need. Given the machine's age, it wouldn't be easy, and my project could even vanish at any moment. But, as fate would have it, while researching and watching many YouTube videos of restorations, mostly from the United States, I remember stumbling upon a video where I was paying close attention to detail. I noticed the owner opening a box of spare parts from a purchase, and it said "Visionary Cycles." I froze the image and wrote down the name of the store to look it up, and I finally found it."

"From then on, I started buying all the parts I needed from this wonderful and fantastic store, and I found everything I needed there, even I was so surprised to find such small replacement parts that I never thought they'd have, so I placed my first order and I was truly amazed at how fast it was, the packaging was excellent, and I loved that every purchase always includes a thank-you note and some helpful stickers.

Here are some photos of my XT bikes, which I managed to finish and get 100% working again, and I did the best I could to restore them. Thank you so much! Visionary Cycles is awesome!!"  - Carlos Orellana A