CB 750 Cafe'

Where do I begin..... I guess a picture says a thousand words.... We built this bike and sold it to a guy from NY NY he said, come on guys I know you can do better,(sorry choppie, but we are resurrecting the bruiser more to come on that project soon)lets do a gold frame and chrome swing arm, fiber glass tank, lots of shinny bits and lots of holes, get a fantastic pipe to finish off that fresh motor (the motor is very very nice I had no problems cruising at a buck 10 and lots of room to go)and a fancy paint job to boot, and a Harley wheel on the back with some fat meat to hold the beasty to the ground. So he asked me if I was up to doing my best work and I said hell yeah. I want this bike to go beyond all expectations. Especially mine.



So we begin the planning process, tank, parts, procurement, who can do the powder coating, the paint, striping, fabrication, and how are we gonna take all these ideas, and parts and put them all together in a way that does not look like a bunch of stuff crammed together, which it is. The vision of this bike is to be seamless from tip to tail. Let no detail be over looked.

So we ordered a seat and tank from airtech..... took a bit o time but super quality





Found a nice ole' rusty Harley wheel 17x5 incher nice and fat to be spun on to a 750 hub





This Yosh Pipe was procured by Carpy all the way from Japan. Thanks mate! I still owe you a beer.




Whoops we have a style failure, the airtech seat as nice as it is, is too frigging big, we took and pole and found that less than 1/2 of all bonafide cafe' bike enthusiasts found the look to be less than desirable. So back to the drawing board and we had to fab this one out of metal,does not save much weight but it looks good.




And now we are here with all the stuff we need in the same place and at the same time, we mount, weld, and grind off all things unnecessary then fill and grind again so it will not be a nasty distraction after we go to coat. Then we disassemble the bruiser and send all the bits out.




How am I looknin now?

Looking soooo good.





Here we are at gold (2 coats-o-powder and a clear. Thanks Brady) and a Vipex rear shock (another long story). This bike will now start to take shape.

That is where we are at after months of back and forth and faxes and hour long conversations (dealing with east coast west coast thing), but damn it is worth the hassle, as every one that has put there ass in to this project is standing very proud.

I can not wait to see how this comes together.

So double up your Vodka and get ready for more posts.

XS Bomber hits the road

We could not wait a day for the seat and tank to come back from hellbilly our striper. So we had take her down the street. So we taped on the battery and fashioned a tank from an xs of some year and made it work. Ike came back with the big olde' grin and proclaimed that the bike was ~ Flippin fast ~ at a 1/4 throttle and under 4k rpms. So as fast as she is we will wait 'till we get the front brake installed before she goes out again.

Lucky us we had the anti-wheelie brake. This bike is gonna wear rear tires out fast.

残酷

That is the Japanese translation for the word brutal (at least acording to google beta (english to conji) translation) This bike is a brutal cafe' racer, infact it was a racer and now we have to make it work on the street. Not so easy as we do not know exactly what is in it. We do know it has a big bore (size unknown) and a lumpy cam (we do not know how lumpy) but we are sure it will idle at less than 2k RPM , dual disk, and it is very, very loud. We are not done yet and it just looks mean. This bike is waiting for it's seat and tank to come back from on of our painters. right now we are dialing in the jetting, we have 105's in now and shows only white on the plugs. Gonna have to drop 110's or 115's in this beasty.

We have the Chad on this one.

The throttle and clutch and a whole lot-o-grinding.

So today the Bomber took several steps forward towards being my personal escort for the next couple of weeks. early this morning I cut down the throttle and clutch cables so that they will not be hanging out and waiting for some one to hang laundry on them. The 1/4 turn throttle is going to be fun.

And here is Matt gringding another 3 lbs off the frame, who needs a centerstand. (just use a jack)

Tidler Tour

Thanks to the VME! Half of my shop and our fathers made it out and about on Vashon Island this year. We need to build more small bore bikes and have more people come out. Great event and better than a crummy olde' game of golf.

Now that is an armadillo!

I think that this picture speaks for it's self.

It's been a long week and I'm going to bed, because tomorrow for fathers day me and my father will be on the tidler tour. I'll take some pics.

(Pic remastered by Mike)

The Shop Mechanic Army

This is The Chad, I was lucky enough to have him come to my shop one day looking for some cafe' mirrors and I found that he was a refugee HD tech and was flipping Cafe' bikes, so we worked out a deal and now chad builds custom cafe' bike at my shop. He is usually heard saying "Custom" at the top of his lungs and hacking or bending some piece of a fame or bracket off to accomplish his goals.

This is Isaac here grinding away. He is a talented motor builder with an attention to detail that would shock most engineers. As pleasant as he is he'll tell you what he thinks of your Virago if you ask him to make it run, or try and sit on his motorcycle (a lovely cb125).

I'm lucky to have both these guys in the shop as obviously I spend all my time writing this blog.