Leftovers are an absolute gift. If you’ve ever gotten so deep into a project that you forget to eat for hours, and then find yourself standing in front of your fridge in a hangry haze, you already know this. They’re like a delicious gift from past-you to present-you, aren’t they?  

What if those leftovers are bike parts, though? Those of us who are DIY-inclined slowly amass collections of bits and pieces. Maybe we sell them, or we give them to another rider who can use them. What if you have a whole lot of spare parts and they start to look more like puzzle pieces? If that’s you, then you might just be Allen Millyard, and you might decide to build something like this 1974 Kawasaki S3 500 two-stroke twin. 

In this video, Millyard quickly takes you on a tour of how the build came together. Now, obviously it helps if you’re able to machine and weld things yourself. It also clearly makes a humongous difference if you’re as skilled and visionary and engineer as he is. He’s a singular talent, and we’re eternally grateful that he loves to share both his expertise and his motorbike passion with the world.  

A good portion of this video is also dedicated to taking the finished project out for a ride. You get both video and audio, so you most definitely get to hear the end result. It’s definitely best listened to through headphones, although you should be aware that it does get quite loud at times.  

Is this not the ultimate form of recycling? Some people make sculptures out of old motorcycle parts, and that’s cool—but this is truly some next-level stuff. It’s a good reminder that sometimes you just have to turn something over and look at it a little differently to see its true potential. Most of us aren’t the engineers Millyard is, but there’s still so much we can learn from his approaches. 

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