It’s got a one-off seat and the rear was lowered by 2” after mounting some Harley shock absorbers. In terms of bolt-ons the R65 also sports Ventura bars and Domino throttle and grips. The wiring, which is still a bit of a work in progress, now now all runs through a Motogadget M-unit box with mini switches, mini speedo and M-lock while the controls are a gorgeous pair by Kustomtech in Italy. The subframe was cut and modified with superfluous tabs and footpegs removed. But thankfully for us all he’s persevered, and we’ve ended up with what you see here. That proved one of the more difficult parts of the process – getting the runaround from workshops who weren’t up the task. So he had to farm out some of the more difficult parts of the build. Like many of us Matt’s got limited garage space. But there was a bit of a caveat with the build. I was hooked.” So Matt drew on a collection of hundreds of pictures of old scramblers, desert sleds and 6 day trials bikes to help with inspiration to find out exactly what he wanted. “As a seven-year-old I loved that thing, jumping it and getting it sideways. So Instead, Matt went back to the bike he had when he was a kid – the old Yamaha MX80. “Black wheels, cut rear subframes, monoshock conversions… they all looked the same to me,” he says. But there’s a flip side to tackling such a common base for a custom build. Which is seemingly easy, given the gamut of custom BMW airheads out there. “That same afternoon I was stripping it down to a rolling frame and I went about creating a plan,” he says. He wasted no time in getting it back to his garage. The old boxer itself had been sitting baking in the sun for a while but was otherwise mechanically sound. “When I arrived I already knew the owner, which was a bit of a coincidence,” Matt recalls.

“I found this for a good price not far from where I live.” He saddled up and headed out to take a look at the R65 Beemer. “I’m always looking at classifieds for old cars and bikes just for curiosity,” Matt says. So much so he went out and built this, a gorgeous 1984 BMW R65 scrambler. And lately the moto bug has bitten again. But when he was young he lived and breathed bikes, belting around on a little 80cc Yamaha.

Trawling through his drool-worthy Instagram shows his passion for racing old Porsches and other, lesser marques. Matt Hart’s a photographer – and a damn good one at that.

Bmw scrambler