Guest blog by our friend Howard

During a visit to the Cool Flo Cave and seeing the amazing job the Carter Bros. had done on their latest panel van I was inspired to build a retro looking ‘Cool Flo’ bike. Something with a similar image to the infamous splitscreen VW’s that Cool Flo are so well known for.

The VW scene is so big there have been a number of crossovers over the years where scenes of similar interests and values join seamlessly together so I felt it really wouldn’t be out of place for a bike builder to ‘tip his hat’ towards the VW boys…

And so it began. I hunted out a suitable bike for the project which was a 1981 Suzuki GS650GT, a model often overlooked by other custom bike builders. It’s a shaft drive which means the back end can be kept looking very minimalist and the style of the bike was a perfect match to give that 60’s-70’s retro beach cruiser look.

I went for an old school pastel blue over a bare metal finish to give it that semi restored authentic look and of course the Cool Flo signage both on the tank and embroidered into the hand stitched suede seat. The front light was ‘Frenched’ into an original scramblers number plate to finish off the look.

After a few cuts and chops, a little bit of welding and wiring and wiggling things about for nearly three months, the Cool Flo tribute bike was finally ready to be presented to the world.

It’s funny really, I have built a number of bikes now and not one has turned out exactly as my original design drawings but this one was a very natural build from start to finish. And it really is cool to ride too. I hope you like it?

Howard.

This is the first official bike built under Howard’s company name Ex Acervo Motorbikes (and he says he’s going be very sad to finally see it go to a new home). Visit www.exacervomotorbikes.com for full specs and photos of the Cool Flo GS650GT.