Café Racer Concept

When it comes to countries I don't know a lot about, Estonia is probably near the top of the list. The one thing I do know, is that one of the more interesting motorcycle designs from last year came out of Estonia – the love it or hate it Renard Grand Tourer. So why all the interest in Estonia? Well, last week we received an email from an artist named Kait who lives in Estonia. Kait specializes in post-apocalyptic sci-fi drawings but told us that he recently "spent an entire day looking at all the pages on Pipeburn and decided to build a bike". The problem was, Kait doesn't know anything about bikes. "Because I dont know how to build one, in fact, I dont know anything about motorbikes, I cheated and used a 3D application instead" he says. "There are many logical and technological errors, and probably not very comfortable to ride". The wooden tank might not be to everyones taste, and it may be carrying a bit too much weight for a café racer, but we think Kait deserves his 'café racer concept' to be shown to a wider community — so power down your ion phasers, depressurise your extra-vehicular spacesuits, and park that lunar module in a geo-stationary orbit while you take a few minutes to check out this beautiful concept bike.

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Norton Featherbed Commando

After a chance encounter with a Featherbed framed Commando powered café racer, Canadian Jean Des Rosiers blood started pumping again and he quickly realized he wanted to build something similar. Luckily, Jean had a few parts in storage "I had a featherbed frame, a complete front wheel including a Suzuki front drum brake, a transmission, the front forks, the rear shocks, a bit of money and lots of time" he says. Jean sent us a six page document telling us about his motorcycle history and some details about this Norton project. This is the edited version:

I had a Featherbed frame (the one from the '68 Atlas) stashed deep in my brother’s basement in which I had plans to install an Ariel 500cc single, that project was put away when I raised my family.  Even though it was almost complete, the thought of building a nice Atlas and better still an Atlas café racer was in my mind from that day on.

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1978 Ducati 900 GTS

The motorcycle industry needs more people like Rene Waters. Not in it for the money, but simply for the love of motorcycles. Rene runs the very impressive Ducati Meccanica, which is a website for Ducati enthusiasts. The site has one of the greatest collections of Ducati workshop and owners manuals, photographs and pretty much anything else that will help inspire you to build, buy or restore a Duc. The best thing is, he gives it all away for free, "no money is made, no ads are sold, nothing is for sale... just enjoy it" Rene says.

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Crampton Classic

Not many people have heard of the Crampton Classic, but that could have been a different story if things had gone another way. You see, this working prototype – which is based on the Triumph Speed Triple – initially had the full support of Triumph, but just as it was going into production Triumph changed their mind and decided not to supply the engines. Sadly without the Triumph engines this put a halt on production forever.

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Pipeburn Lost and Found

Check out the Guzzi above. Amazing, huh? We found it last week while doing our usual rounds of the web. We've done just about everything we can to find out a little more about it, but short of photocopying flyers and sticking them to local telegraph poles we've pretty much exhausted all possibilities. Sadly, we're faced with such hot bike tragedies every week here at Pipeburn; really sweet machines that we'd post on the blog in a second if it weren't for the fact that we just can't track down any further info or images on them. So they go into our lost and found folder, never to see the light of day. Until now. If anyone out there knows ANYTHING about these bikes, please feel free to email us and get these rides out of the lost and found and into a post on Pipeburn*.

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Harley Sportster Café Racer

Rachael Prevett, or Racy Rach as she is more commonly known to her friends, has been riding motorcycles her whole life. "I've been riding since I was 8 on the farm where i grew up" says Rach. She has ridden across Europe to Barcelona and Monte-carlo, raced a Ducati in drag racing, sprinted at Brighton speed trials and ridden Flattrack on her T100 pre-unit Triumph at the Hayride – now you know why they call her Racy Rach.

So when Racy Rach wanted a new ride, she approached Steve at Red Max Speed Shop to build her something special. Rach wanted a newer café racer, so after looking around Steve decided a Harley Sportster would be a good option. "She had to have a 1200 and we wanted a clean late one, so this 2005 seemed perfect for the job" says Steve.

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Triley Café Racer

Found this exquisite machine on The Motart blog, which is run by Frank Sider – a man with great taste in motorcycles and other objects of desire. The bike was built by Frenchman Vincent Michel and is called a Triley. If you are wondering what a Triley is, it's a combination of a Triumph 6T engine mounted in a Seeley frame. The Seeley frame is a legendary frame created by well known British builder and side car racer Colin Seeley.

Here's what it says about the build on Motart: "The cylinder engine was increased to 750CM3 the Vilo has been lightened pistons high compression, reinforced connecting rods, gear box 6 speed Quaiffe magnesium front brake and fork from Seeley, hub and rear brake Norton Manx". The beautiful British and chequered flag paintwork was done by Ralph at Aero Color Design in France.

Those French really know how to build a café racer, don't you agree? Oui, oui?

[Photography by Vincent Michel]

P.S If you want to find out more about Colin Seeley, there's a great book about his ambitious and action packed life]

1972 Honda CB450 Café Racer

We were recently accused of featuring too many Honda CB’s on Pipeburn. So when I received this CB450 from Benjie Flipprboi at BCR, I had to think twice about posting it. After about 10 seconds of thinking... I decided it was too nice not to feature. The bike was painstakingly built over an 18 month period by one of Benjies good customers Kevin Dinsmoor – using a lot of BCR products. The unique shaped tank is a BCR Hammer Head and one of my favourite tanks on the market. The cafe seat is also from the talented Mr Flipprboi and both tank and seat have been painted in an old Toyota Corolla green from the 70's with anthrecite pin stripe. "It took a while to choose" says Joe. "I don't have photoshop so it took days to settle on a stripe pattern and three rolls of tape." This is how Kevin describes the project:

The wheels were coated semi-black and sent to Buchanan's for new stainless spokes and lacing. I used a front drum from a 1970 CL450 I had – loved the look. Forks rebuilt, tapered stem bearings. Engine was a complete tear down and rebuild +3 over bore. Polished everything possible. Homemade rear sets (BCR style), pegs machined stainless. BCR bars with 450 gauge. LED bolts in tree for neutral & hi beams. Stock handlebar mount holes filled and poished. New vintage switches for bars without kill switch. LED bolts for turn signals, drilled out headlamp mounting bolts and threaded in the signal led's. BCR head light brackets. Powdercoated upper shock tubes. Sectioned stock headlight ears to use for gator upper mounting. Hondaman electronic ignition. BCR velocity stacks. CB900F rear shocks, disassembled and polished. Nickel plated chain. Rear set frame mounts custom made, lowered and moved back. BCR stainless pea shooter exhaust (my neighbors hate me now). The biggest pain in the butt was the rear swing arm. It is 3" extended. The stock one just looks too short. So I made it longer. Then the shocks (the longest shocks with fork bottom) were too short, so I sectioned the shock mount off a CB550 swing arm and grafted it onto my arm. Then the center stand was too short for the new ride height, so again I sectioned two center stands together for the height while keeping it tight to the exhaust so it still looks cool when it's up. The bike took 1.5 yrs to build and three CB450 bikes and a few CB550 parts.

Apart from his neighbours hating him for that peashooter exhaust, I think most people (including myself) will love this classy CB450 café racer. For more pics you can visit Kevins Flickr page. 

2001 Triumph Bonneville

It always amazes me what people can create in their home garages. People like Lee from New Zealand who has been modifying bikes for many years and fabricates all the alloy parts on his little lathe. "I have butchered most makes and models to the horror of the purists" jokes Lee. He bought this Bonnie new back in 2001 and started modifying it straight away. "The first thing I made were the Ace bars" Lee says. "Then I spun up the grips, pegs, mirror and side cover screws on my Myford lathe. Next I made up the tail light bracket and cut down and chromed the front guard. I removed the front forks and cut the mudguard mounts off them and polished them by hand. I cut frame infills out of alloy plate and drilled holes in everything I could, then got it all chromed." The rear shocks are Koni's that are made to fit a Harley Dynaglide with the eyes drilled out. Lee made the pipes out of a box of bends, gas welded them together and then hand filed off the welds. The muffler end caps were also spun up out of billet alloy and then the tank had some cosmetic surgery. "The original gas tank always annoyed the hell out of me with that ugly lip all the way around, so I cut the lip off and gas welded the thing back together" says Lee. He is right, the tank looks so much cleaner with that 'ugly lip' removed.

As you can tell by looking at this beautiful Bonnie, Lee loves drilling more than BP does. "My wife has concerns about my hole drilling fetish" he says. Lee has almost finished another project, a Suzuki Bandit 1200 Streetfighter which shows his latest fetish... alloy spikes.