When you see a shipping container while you’re out and about, do you ever give a lot of thought to what’s inside? Maybe it’s just background, another part of your day like the traffic, or that one funny license plate you caught at a stop light. If you’re Jish, the talented U.K.-based builder who chronicles his epic builds for all of YouTube to see, then one of these inconspicuous boxes is your workshop. It is, as they say, where the magic happens—as you’ll clearly see in this video.
Last time we checked in with Jish, he turned a Yamaha XJ650 into an amazing café racer that looked every bit as modern as you could possibly want. In this video, though, he’s tackling a 1981 Suzuki GS250, and turning it into this amazing café racer-enduro hybrid little beast that looks and sounds completely like the business.
As he notes here, the strange times we’re living through are no fun—but having a project like this can certainly help your mental health. We’d also add here that the fact that Jish and other talented builders like him keep sharing their talents on YouTube doesn’t hurt, either. (Thanks, guys—no, seriously. Keep up the excellent work.)
First up, of course, Jish wants to see if he can get the GS250 running. After trying a few things, it’s kind of running but not sounding healthy at all, so then he starts to dive into the engine to see what’s wrong. Valve clearances and cam chain adjustment don’t seem to help, so the problem is obviously even deeper than that. There’s nothing for it; it’s time to take the engine out entirely, then take the entire rest of the bike apart.
Of course, a big job calls for a bigger workshop than that tiny little shipping container, which Jish luckily has access to. After taking the engine out, the rest of the bike comes apart pretty easily to tend to important things like powder coating the frame, zinc-plating the hardware, and tending to all the little bits and pieces that come with tackling any type of build with aesthetic aspirations in the first place.
All in all, Jish is smart enough to know what he can (and wants) to tackle, and what’s better sent to a specialist. For example, after carving the seat foam and precisely diagramming the pattern he wants for the saddle, he sends it out to an upholstery shop to get exactly the result he’s looking for. It looks, quite predictably, amazing—and even better once the entire build is assembled. A solid amount of work is expertly edited (and soundtracked) down into a 25 minute video that’s well worth your time.
