WHAT LIES WITHIN
Inspired by the low-slung factory racers of the 1950s, this Guzzi’s owner set about building a modern café custom. The result? A brilliant combination of the bare essentials, says Odgie…
I’ve watched my mate Nige build bikes for over 40 years now. For most of that time he’s built (shush) choppers, but when he branched out into building bikes for other people, his skills were brought to bear on a wider variety of machinery. He’s always up for a challenge and it’s been fascinating to watch those skills being honed. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s now one of the top bike builders in the country.
Just take a look at the latest creation to come out of his workshop. Nige’s work is always superb but this Guzzi is among my favourites. The lines, the stance, the attention to detail – all applied to an interesting basic concept – combine to produce a machine that as easy to wax lyrical about as it is photogenic.
Nige is at pains to point out that he’s only the messenger. The message itself comes from the Guzzi’s owner, Neil. It was Neil’s vision that inspired the build, his ideas that played a very great part in the way the bike turned out. Even though he didn’t actually wield the spanners, Neil was certainly involved in every aspect of the work.
The deal came about when Neil turned up at Nige’s unit one day, with a set of Ducati forks in his hand and dragging a Guzzi Spada frame behind him. Various people had said they could CNC machine a top yoke to suit, but there’s a difference between punching numbers into a computer and being a Real Engineer. Neil needed someone who could shorten the steering stem and sort the bearings to marry the two parts together. He’d been to one engineering firm who did much teeth sucking and kept saying how expensive it would be. Not one to be suckered into spending money needlessly, Neil did some internet research and found himself at Nige’s unit.
‘I went to see Nige’, explains Neil, ‘showed him what I wanted. He took one look and said, yes, I can do that for you. I left the bits with him and next week it was done, simple e as that. He’d made a complete new stem, pressed it into the bottom yoke, and sorted the bearings. I thought to myself, this is someone I can work with!
‘I’d built a café racer myself back in 2011 from a Ducati Monster, but I was aware that on this build the engineering required would be beyond my capabilities. I was so impressed with Nige that I asked him if he wanted to do the rest of it. And that’s how we
came to work together.’
At this stage, Neil already had a very clear idea inside his head of what he wanted. He liked the look of the early Guzzi Le Mans Mk1, and had bought a MkIV Le Mans five years ago as a good basis for a project. The first year was spent purely looking at the Guzzi in his garage and deciding what he wanted to do with it.
‘I was heavily influenced by my childhood. My dad used to watch the bike racing and those images of the classic racers always stuck with me. I could have built a café racer again but it wouldn’t have been as inspiring. I realised what I really wanted to do was build a tribute to those early racers, something that looked like Geoff Duke would have ridden it, but as a useable road bike with modern brakes and suspension.
‘ The real starting point came about when I saw a Gilera Four factory racer. Then at the Classsic TT I saw the Guzzi bike built for Brian Cowan by Kaffee Maschine in Germany. I didn’t want to copy anything, but I was inspired to build my own version of a classic racer.’
So why a shortened steering stem in the first place? Since Neil’s vision was for long and low, a modern interpretation of the Guzzi works racers of old, he was well aware that he didn’t want anything that was too tall. Race bikes sit high these days – put a Moto GP bike next to a Manx Norton – and even Guzzi’s own MkIV frame was taller than Neil liked. But the earlier Tonti-designed Guzzis had a two-inch shorter headstock than the later models, so there’s your head start through some relatively straightforward machining.
Gutsibits in Huddersfield supplied the replacement frame, and once Nige had worked his initial magic, sitting the plot on shortened Ducati Monster forks with a Ducati Sport Classic front hub and a Guzzi California rear bevel drive, both laced to alloy rims and shod with Avon RoadRider tyres, it gave that beautifully elegant stance.
Neil is at pains to point out something that
every builder should take note of – getting the profile right is always a major deal in any special build.
‘It’s a matter of flow,’ he says. ‘All the parts need to work together. The Guzzi is long, which helps. I see so many café racers where the seat looks too far back against the back wheel, sort of perched there. And I wanted that low front profile, it was really important. I think it gives it a more aggressive stance yet keeps all that flow going. All the lines have to accentuate each other, it’s a big thing for me. I can see what I want in my head. At times me and Nige had some disagreements about how things should be done since we’re both quite strong-minded, but we were always able to come to an understanding.
‘Some things I wanted weren’t feasible in engineering terms and Nige would explain why. But we always found a way around those and mostly it came together exactly how I wanted it to. I think sometimes things flounder because people just give up. I don’t think that way. I think if you set your mind to something, and just keep solving whatever problems come along, you can do anything you want to. I really wanted this bike. I was lucky enough to find Nige who could do all the things I couldn’t do, but I didn’t want to just hand it over and say “Let me know when it’s finished.”
‘ Then you get someone else’s ideas, which will never live up to your own. But that’s not to diminish Nige’s part in all this, he’s an
incredibly clever and talented man. He was able to understand what I wanted and find ways to create it. There’s so much of both of us gone into the bike. And I like to think the process has made us friends now rather than builder and customer.’
The 1000 Le Mans engine was sent for ceramic cleaning, then fully rebuilt by PEP in Preston to their usual faultless standards, using parts supplied by the ever helpful Gutsibits. The heads were flowed a little, and a ‘cheerful cam’ was installed which, along with the Dell’ Orto pumper carbs and that exquisite exhaust system, hand-built in stainless steel by another local craftsman, Ben Sergeant, means the bike won’t exactly be short of poke.
With Neil’s vision starting to come together nicely in the basic chassis and engine, the peripherals needed to be sorted. The Tank Shop in Dumfries created that gorgeous fuel tank. It’s not immediately obvious when you see the bike in Nige’s workshop but, once pushed outside into the sunshine, that subtle bulge at either side which sits over the cylinder and echoes the rocker box casting suddenly springs into life. How much simpler would it have been to have a plainer side to the tank, and how much less would it have been too.
The Tank Shop was also responsible for that rear mudguard and neat front fairing, while Ben Sergeant formed the curves of the front mudguard. But again Neil wasn’t just the Good Ideas and Direction man.
‘I taught myself how to do fibreglassing, that expanded my vision on what could be achieved. I made a mock-up of the front fairing. I wanted to do a modern interpretation of the old Matchless G50 nose fairings, then sent it to the Tank Shop to copy. They also made me an alloy seat unit, but in the end it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, so I made my own out of fibreglass, then it was upholstered by Bootleg Bike Seats.’ And then of course there’s all the details. You’ll have noticed how the hand-made holes in the rearsets echo the hand-made holes in the spark plug guards which echo the handmade holes in the steering stem nut which echo the hand-made holes in the little boss attached to the fairing that the clutch cable passes through… won’t you?
And then it came to paint. ‘Here’s where me and Nige probably disagreed the most,’ says Neil. ‘My vision started when I was on holiday and we passed a barber’s shop. There was a pushbike in there with a chrome or nickel frame and a green leather seat. Look at that combination! I had already researched the old Guzzi race bikes. They didn’t use
paint, to save weight, they chemically treated the aluminium so it was a shade of green, that’s where the colour came from. I knew that’s what I wanted on the bike. Other people told me it wouldn’t work, and I was also told not to paint the tank but to leave it in polished aluminium. But I knew exactly what I wanted so I stuck to my guns.
‘I found a paint colour that was a close match, Reseda Green, and Richard at Motorcycle FX in Burscough did an excellent job for me. It wasn’t easy getting the lines right and the satin finish on the tank, yet keeping half of it aluminium for contrast, but I explained how I wanted it and he really did it perfectly.
‘I have to say I’m extremely happy with the way the whole bike turned out. I like the way Nige was able to relocate all the electrics, to keep the gap open between the engine and rear wheel. It was important to me to be able to see through the bike, so it adds an air of lightness. Nige’s skills at wiring are just outstanding. And simple things like the way the rear shocks align parallel with the frame tubes.
‘When I was building my first café racer in 2011, I was really struggling to find people to do the jobs I couldn’t do. I knew the right people must be out there, you have to just keep asking around and asking around. You have your dream bike in your head, all exactly how you want it, but you need to find the right people to help you realise it. I wanted a bike with modern rideability, but one that paid a genuine tribute to the old classic racers. I wanted that old, classic look. Not everyone could see that vision. But Ben and Richard and Gutsibits and everyone else involved, most especially Nige, they’ve all helped me create my dream bike. My thanks to them is that I couldn’t have done it without them, and I couldn’t be happier with it.’
By the time you read this, the Guzzi will be back on the road and Neil will be happily riding around on it. It’s a unique twist on the current café racer prevalence, to echo an old race bike, yet that’s exactly how café racers started by taking their styling cues from the bikes Duke and Surtees and Hailwood were riding. Since then they’ve evolved into a style in their own right (no-one ever raced a CX500, for example), but Neil’s vision takes us back to those first days, in some ways even more accurately, yet still with a modern capability. In realising his vision of the Guzzi, Neil has created as smart a classic / custom bike as you’ll see anywhere.