Not too long ago, one of my (and many others’) favourite YouTube accounts, FortNine, dropped a video titled ‘The Ugly Truth of Custom Bikes.’ In it, F9’s Josh Beausoleil waxes lyrical about his Honda CX500—a bike that he’s owned since he was 17—while also squeezing in a bizarre two-minute paid promotion for a water bottle.

Like all of F9’s content, the video is well worth watching, but the gist is that Josh regrets the custom work he did to the bike. He rationalises that almost every mod has actually made the bike worse, and that the knowledge gained working on it could just as easily have come from restoring it instead. He adds that old bikes are getting scarce and are worth preserving, and that customisation often undoes what OEMs go to great lengths to get right.

As someone who has, rather miraculously, managed to make a career out of the niche-within-a-niche that is custom motorcycling, I’m compelled to weigh in. Here’s the thing: Josh ain’t wrong. At least, not entirely.

The ugly truth of custom bikes is that nine out of 10 of them are rolling evidence of poor decision-making and reckless enthusiasm. What starts as a burning desire to create something cool either results in a hodgepodge of mismatched visual cues or a bastion of sketchy engineering. Sometimes, both.

The problem is that we can’t help ourselves. There’s a sense of individualism tethered to the experience of owning a motorcycle—and so the process of modifying your bike is almost a foregone conclusion. (Don’t believe me? I offer the entire adventure motorcycling industry as proof.)

I speak from firsthand experience. I built a custom Kawasaki W650 pretty enough to land it on the pages of Bike EXIF, but it never ran right. The exhausts blew out their baffles, one of the pod filters fell off on the highway, and the engine never quite operated at 100%. I eventually sold it for far less than I spent on it—then vowed never to make the same mistake again.

Between the sad tale of my W650 and myriad conversations with the world’s best custom motorcycle builders, I’ve slowly figured out what it takes to build the tenth bike—the one that rolls out of the workshop better than it rolled in.

The first approach is the most straightforward: send the likes of deBolex Engineering or WalzWerk a blank cheque and have them do it for you. But if your pockets aren’t that deep and/or you prefer to get your hands dirty, the most valuable tools in your arsenal are restraint and patience.

Restraint means second-guessing every decision. Patience means prioritising some tweaks over others, while accepting that the full project will take longer than you’d hoped.

Before you chop up your stock seat pan, take an angle grinder to your mudguards, or put an order, ask yourself: “Is this motorcycle mechanically sound?” No matter how rad your ride looks, it looks decidedly less rad stuck on the side of the road. Clean and sync those carbs, replace that worn-out chain, fix those wiring gremlins.

Don’t promise yourself that you’ll attend to those issues later, because by then you will have spent all the time and money that you’re willing to, only to be left with a very pretty paperweight. Fix the damn thing, then customise it.

Next, make it ride good. There’s no sense in having a motor that purrs like a kitten while relying on crusty brakes, spongy suspension, and inappropriate tyres to keep you right-side-up. If you’re working on an old motorcycle, these items are well beyond their sell-by date. If it’s a newer bike, chances are the manufacturer chose its components with a budget in mind (unless you’ve bought something like the brilliant Triumph Speed Twin 1200 RS).

Refurbish what you can, replace what you can’t, and upgrade whatever your bank account allows you to. If you do nothing else to your bike, these improvements alone are worth their weight in gold. Trust.

Things get subjective from here on out. We’ve established that motorcycles are, by their very nature, impractical—custom motorcycles even more so. If this is the path you’ve chosen, accept that there will be compromises. If this doesn’t sit well with you, or if you’re working with a classic motorcycle that’s worth preserving, consider a tasteful restomod instead.

Good restomods are woefully underappreciated. An old BMW boxer would benefit hugely from an engine overhaul, brake and suspension upgrade, and a full rewire with modern LED lighting. And then there are the stunning UJM restomods of the formidable AC Sanctuary.

Even if you’re not building a restomod, I’d advise adopting a similar mindset from the outset. Before you get to the wild stuff, swap out the clunky OEM lights, mirrors, and indicators for high-quality aftermarket replacements. And don’t skimp—cheap parts are easier to obtain, but they rarely look or perform as well as their pricier counterparts. It’s often the small details that distinguish pro builds from backyard hack jobs.

At this point, there’s nothing wrong with going the whole hog on your custom bike—just as long as you’re realistic about the outcome. If you’re willing to put up with an achy back, a numb butt, poor weather protection, or a limited range for the sake of style, no one can stop you. It’s your bike, after all, and if you’re only ever planning to ride it to the local café every other Sunday, who cares? Just remember that choosing the right aftermarket seat, or using good foam to shape your own, can make a world of difference—as can working out a comfortable handlebar position.

Of course, none of this applies if you’ve been influenced by visionaries like Max Hazan or Mitsuhiro Kiyonaga and you want to build an outlandish masterpiece just to prove you can. By all means, go wild—the custom scene needs pioneers.

But if you’re an average Joe who wants a clean, regret-free custom (with the caveat that you’ll never make back the money you spend on it), take my advice. You’ll thank me later.