Honda CL360

Living in Australia we sometimes forget how cold it can get in other parts of the world. On the recent Pipeburn ride I heard many grown men whining about how cold the early morning was in Sydney and it was only 16˙C (60˙ fahrenheit). So I take my mohair beanie off to guys like Aaron Ruse from Illinois who has spent the last American winter building a bike in freezing temperatures in his unheated concrete garage. Aaron is a young guy who recently decided it was time to learn some wrenching skills and build his first bike. "I got interested in motorcycles last summer as a way to learn about basic mechanics," says Aaron. This interest quickly grew into a love for classic motorcycles. He was inspired by his uncle R.J. Ruse and his buddies who restore classic bikes, along with a new friendship with Team Hansan Racing's Terry Naughtin, and set out to build a cafe racer last winter. "I found a beat up '75 CL360 and a badly dented and rusted CB350f tank in a back junk yard of a local motorcycle shop and set to work".

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1975 Honda CB550K - "Le Mans Special"

Want to freak out a graphic designer? Make him pray to a higher power and start rocking back and forth on his fancy bent-wood chair. Then give him a job where he can only use two colours - safety orange and turquoise, and then watch him squirm. All the rules of colour theory say "no, this absolutely cannot work." And yet behold the beauty that is the Gulf Oil livery. Is that angels I hear? Beautiful retro motor racing angels playing heavenly engine music through trumpets that look remarkably like velocity stacks? Chris Trotter from Bozeman, Montana heard that music too. And that music said unto him "build the world's sweetest Honda cafe racer and paint it like the world's coolest race car, then send it over to those incredibly great guys at Pipeburn so that they may show it to the world." And beholdeth, he did. And it was good.

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Interview: Anvil Motociclette Costruttori

How much do we love you guys? Here's not one amazing bike, but two of them, served up with some delicious pasta dishes, a Spanish road trip, and a side of authentic Italian design genius. Welcome to the Ristorante Anvil Motociclette. Buon gusto!

Can you tell us a little about yourselves?

San Marco Filios Here I am. I was born in a small village in the Piacenza countryside, in the far 1983. Aries. I have been living in Milan for 8 years. Milan is a perfect city where you can find anything you are looking for, but my country soul makes me want to move to the countryside as soon as possibile, maybe to open a fantastic Anvil garage.

I have been attracted by motorbikes since I was a child, so I passed most of my time riding a cross bike, jumping on the tracks. After I got my bachelor in the Communication Academy I worked as art director for 4 years in the "Armando Testa Advertising Agency". Now I draw tailor-made, leather, motorbike suits in a very popular company that makes professional motorbike wear.

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Honda CB350 Café Racer

Michael LaFountain from Raccia Motorcycles has been obsessed with motorcycles ever since he built his first bike when he was 17 years old. Little did he know that building that motorcycle would shape the course of his life for the next 16 years. "I’ve been buying and recreating bikes ever since" says Michael. "I’ve built British and Italian motorbikes in the past but I have found the Japanese bikes to be more of a challenge due to the fact that the a large majority of the British and Italian bikes were beautiful to begin with, unlike a lot of Japanese bikes."

After spending a few years in Europe and spending way too much time plastering his apartment walls with sketches of new ideas, Michael knew that when he returned home he had to take this bike building thing more seriously. "I formed Raccia Motorcycles in 2006 with the main objective to create vintage Japanese race-inspired motorcycles using primarily Japanese parts along with some hand built parts" he says. The main shop is in Southern California but 4 months ago Michael opened another satellite shop in the Bay Area of northern California.

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Honda CB750 Café Racer

I stumbled upon this thing of beauty on a blog called Anatomy of a Cafe Racer. The bike was built by a talented young guy from Kansas called Pete (AKA Pistol Pete). After building it over a two year period, he finally finished it last week. I wanted to find out more about this classy CB café racer, so I got in contact with Pete and asked him a couple of questions:

Can you tell us a little about yourself?

My name is Pete Moyer, I'm 28 and live in Kansas. I work in healthcare and I am married, but have no children. Ever since I can remember I have been practically obsessed with anything on wheels. I slept with hotwheels instead of teddy bears. Growing up I lived on a farm, so I had the opportunity to ride lots of dirtbikes and fourwheelers. In highschool I got more into hotrods and fast cars. I would fix up a car and sell it for in order to acquire a faster one. I frequently could be found at the local dragstrip racing my cars. I then went off to college and had only time to study. I did tinker around on a CB500 during my summer breaks, but it was a real hack job (and probably not very safe!). After graduation I moved into a house with a tiny garage. My only choice was to work on bikes, often doing so on my back porch. I built several and went a little overboard on the last one (or so my wife says). 

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Pipeburn Video: Bonita

As you may remember, we recently featured a very beautiful Honda cafe racer called "Bonita" that got quite a respectable response from you, the good readers of this here blog. Actually, it was more like Beatles riot come to think of it. Basking in the post-victory afterglow, Pepe and I were shooting the poop on all things Bonita, and he mentioned that he was really impressed with the two Deus videos we had recently posted. Luckily for us (or more correctly, me) it didn't take a genius to figure out what to do next; we'd celebrate the the hottest girl we knew using the magic of modern video. And after many hiccups (including delaying the shoot due to a heatwave) we have managed to finish the thing. What an epic odyssey. Hope you like it.

Many thanks to Pepe (of course) for letting us dance with his babe on the roof of a supermarket at midnight, and his trusty sidekick Pablo. Thanks to Toby for his eccentric yet genius DOP skills and Banana Joe's for letting us shoot on their roof. Also thanks to Lee from BJs Custom Choppers for letting us stay after the lights went out (long story). The song is "Some Kinda Love" by The Velvet Underground.

Honda XL 100 "minimus" Café Racer

We see a lot of bikes around here. A LOT of bikes. I personally would see at least 30 new bikes a day in my wanderings around the net. Scott would probably see even more. I see a very few really cool bikes; just about anything from wrenchmonkees will tick that box. Deus too. Then there's the nice bikes. Well built and fun to own, but no show stopper. Then there's the average bikes. The forgettable bikes. The not-quite-finished bikes. The tacky bikes and the just plain crap bikes. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. But there's one thing I hardly ever see, and that's really original bikes. Bikes that just jump up and grab you buy the eyeballs and say "seen anything like me before, punk?" In the last 6 months I have seen exactly two of those bikes; the Moto Guzzi Boardtracker and this one right here. Say "hello" to Glenn McNaughton's Honda XL 100 "minimus".

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Deus CB100 - The Prospect

When it comes to building a custom bike, the humble Honda CB100 probably doesn't sit very high on many peoples list. Unless you live in Indonesia, where thousands of these bullet proof singles are ready for a rebuild — and that's just what Deus Bali are doing. "This is one outcome of the ‘CB100 range’ we are working on" Tom from Deus mentions. "We have rounded up a gaggle of 1970’s CB100's and are putting a different twist on each one." The bike has been named 'The Prospect', because it was a while before they work out what to transform it into. It finally all came together when Deus Sydney sent them a chrome alloy 'Peanut' tank and "as soon as the reflective orb hit the frame the other parts just seemed to gravitate towards it, until finally the general idea was complete."

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Honda XR500 Desert Racer

This story starts in 1979, when a young 12 year old is flicking through a copy of his uncles Cycle Magazine and comes across a review on the newly released Honda XR500. The article makes such a huge impact on him that he promises himself, that one day he will buy one. Now, 30 years later and Andrew Greenland has finally made that childhood dream happen. Andrew isn't a newcomer to the pages of Pipeburn — we featured his meticulous NX650 Street Tracker last year. As he says " Honda fourstroke dirtbikes are definitely my thing."

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