A café racer for the price of a fry-up
for the price of a greasy fry-up (or two…)
Matt shows what you can do with an inappropriate motorcycle and a lack of tools, money or talent – but you still want a café racer
Many years ago a beautiful lady called Rachel used to teach with me at the training school in Norwich. It was the mid Nineties, seemed to come to our school, training was a lot of fun and the group of instructors were all young, enthusiastic, and loved bikes. Pete had a Z900, Rich had an American Police KZ1000 with titanium under the footboards, Rick had a beautiful Kawasaki ZXR750H1, and Rachel had a 1989 Honda CBR600F. With its all-enclosing bodywork in white with red, it looked great, sounded fab and I was very jealous, while trundling along on my BMW K75RT (I was also dispatching at the time). But just like the Suzuki GSX, CBR1000, ZZR600 and Ducati Paso, enclosed bodywork, like the Triumph bathtubs and Ariels decades before, quickly became dated, especially after the odd drop or as panels started getting brittle. Rachel decided to move and sold her bike to my friend Rich, for his first big bike. This it excelled at, and predictability, reliability and comfort took us everywhere and once he moved on to a newer bike, I bought it to start my own training school. By now it had no fairing lowers and was starting to look less glamorous than it once did. As I discovered the incredible workhorse that is Honda ST1100 Pan Europeans, the CBR was pushed into a dilapidated shed.
NEW LIFE
Years came and went, and I ended up working for a motorcycle magazine. I saw the rise in specials being built and as Norfolk has always had a thirst for something different, this gave me the hunger to build something. But I was skint, so no cool donor. I had a Honda
Bros (and still do) but it was too far gone.ThenI
remembered the CBR, which was by this point holding up a shed. After donning my Indiana Jones hat, the CBR was extricated from the shed, which promptly fell down.
WHAT COULD WE BUILD?
The fashion back in the mid Noughties was various, but none seemed to use a modernish, beam-framed supersports bike as a starting point. Hmm. So what were the ‘must-haves’? A classic look was ideal, despite the starting point. But it was already VMCC eligible. I wanted it to handle, I wanted good manners, I didn’t need to worry about tuning, and I knew I wouldn’t know what I wanted until I saw it. And it all had to be done with no money. So that’s easy, then.
Hours upon hours of looking at the bike stripped down on the bench taught me a lot. A beam frame doesn’t look so imposing in black. The stance of the bike could be lowered slightly, but that’s all as the handling was so good to start with. It already had new stainless steel downpipes and budget shock from Wemoto, new Avon Roadrider tyres, and the engine was in good shape, other than an oil leak from the
‘O’ ring that seals the starter. Also, the three-spoke wheels, while outdated for modern bikes, looked good in my eyes. But it was tired, had started to go rusty and needed stripping.
The chassis was blasted and powder coated by a friend who makes fences (thanks, Jack!), then new bearings, head races and the like fitted, as they were all cheap. The engine came in for some serious cleaning as it would be on show, so emery pads, toothbrushes, thinners, brake cleaner and wire wheels went to work, followed by a lacquer from spray cans to keep it looking good. Side casings and wheels got a Ford gold metallic as the local motor factors had a bulk deal, so I also did the brake cylinder and kept some for the petrol tank. The tank looked really modern, with a modern filler, swaged lines, so I took a grinder to it (not recommended), cut the two knee areas out, then the top, swapped the knee ovals around so they went in more, tack-welded it all in place and took it to a brilliant welder, Pete, at engineers par excellence, CWD Engineering. Pete TIG welded the patches and a smooth top, cut a hole, then machined a collar for me to fit an eBay Monza cap. This cost £200, mainly in labour, but transformed the bike into something different – I think a little like an early TZ. Some filler and it was ready for painting. I’ve always been a Jim Clarke fan, so the red, white and gold scheme of Gold Leaf fags would look good – but what were the codes? Classic Lotus is just down the road from me, so I popped in and while I was dribbling over cars, they found the paint codes from the latest Gold Leaf Elise in a car magazine – apparently no one remembers the colour codes and when they got dinged, the sprayer just tried to match them! In the end I needed so little I bought cans of the closest match, then took it to a friendly bodyshop, Ashtons, who lacquered it to protect from petrol. The seat unit was painted at the same time, but had been a real labour of love/ pain. Not happy with anything you could buy, I made a buck from wood and modelling foam, and once I was happy with the shape blending with the tank and the rear light I had from Wemoto, covered it with filler, rubbed it down and Ashtons painted it in whatever colour they were using. I could then take a fibreglass mould, which would finally let me make my own fibreglass seat. It took forever and it isn’t really different enough to really feel worth it. But I know it’s handmade and I have used the skills I learned there since, to make carbon fibre panels for cars and parts for bikes. The seat unit needs a seat. I realised race seat foam is too hard, yet domestic seat foam too soft. In the end I thought of the best bike seat ever invented – the Honda CBR400 – and cut one up, blending it with an old Suzuki seat foam I had, using a hacksaw, Stanley knife and glueing it together. For a cover, I didn’t know anyone with a leather sewing machine (they have a
foot that moves to help with the thick material), so I used fake leather, which is thinner and would go through my mother’s machine – just. We played with offcuts, then put in the diamond stitching and finally the shape, which was then glued and stapled to the fibreboard (because it bends) base.
The electrics... On a Honda CBR nearly all the electrics are within the front fairing; there is plenty of space and they hide away nicely. But I didn’t want a fairing. Weight over the front, looks, and so I had to hide it; under the seat seemed a good place. Sounds so easy, doesn’t it? This is why I like British bikes; they have no wiring. It took forever to create the jigsaw that allowed everything, including the battery, to fit under the seat. It all sits on a beautiful carbon fibre panel that I picked up from a smashed F1 sidecar when I was marshalling as a kid. The plan was to build a new loom once it was working; haven’t got there yet…
GETTING THERE
The exhaust would play a crucial part in taking that 80s look back in time. I found some cheap aftermarket exhausts secondhand that someone couldn’t fit (?) for £30 and got some offcuts of stainless steel pipe from an engineering friend. I then had to learn how to MIG weld stainless, with stainless wire and higher settings, though luckily the gas I use for mild steel (Argon mix) is ok. Welding pipe is tricky. Cutting angles with pipe is trickier and getting the silencers at the angle I wanted was the trickiest! In the end I had the silencers taped with spacers where I wanted them, using them and the downpipe as a jig for the cut pipe. Once tacked together, I could then take them off and weld properly on the bench. I will admit, my friend Steve the Superwelder finished it over to make it look as good as it does – but only because he offered! The front end is standard apart from some fork gaiters, Chinese clip-ons, a cheap eBay headlight and some British-style fat handgrips. There is also a small 3-row oil cooler that sits below the headlight on a CBR, but I figured that isn’t needed as a naked roadbike, so I cut the hoses and placed a stainless pipe between them, which now runs behind the downpipes. There wasn’t a lot of thermal dynamic workings there – it just fitted. The mudguard was from friend Dave’s stash, reshaped, and then some small gauge pipe used to make stays, with washers welded on the ends. The largest headache was also the most expensive part, the Acewell speedo. It has all the functions you’ll ever need with the speedo that works off a magnet on the wheel, which is what you need for a bike that would use a cable. It works brilliantly, looks fantastic, and aftersales was great. But while I understand electrics, I do seem to have an unfair amount of issues. Physically, the wiring has a multi plug in the middle, which is a great idea, but it was in just the wrong place for this bike. And getting the feeds just took me forever. But once I’d finalised that and made a little alloy bracket, all seemed good.
WAS IT WORTH IT?
Finally, and with life getting in the way that was around four years, the Jim Clarke/Lotus/Honda/Café Racer went for an MoT. It passed, though the speedo magnet fell off the wheel. It felt lovely, the position was uncompromising, but what I wanted – this was not meant to be a distance machine. The handling defied its looks; 17in wheels and modern tyres with clip-ons that are actually lower than the originals gave the feeling of holding on to a bull by the horns, literally. The engine benefited from being standard with the original airbox, so no re-jetting was needed, but boy, was it loud! Naïvely I’d thought two silencers would be twice as quiet. Idiot. It was deafening, so I tried blocking one silencer, which made the bike just sound like a sportsbike – at least the two had given it a unique sound, albeit too much. I put more acoustic matting in the exhausts and also lowered the gearing as much