ORIENTAL ANGLES
Back in the day there were numerous aftermarket suppliers offering a range of kits for Japanese bikes. One of the earliest of these must have been Read Titan, based in Leytonstone, London. This enterprising dealership was quick off the blocks in offering a variety of body kits, exhaust systems, rearsets and the like for the Honda CB twins and it also did a rather tidy ‘set of threads’ for the original widowmaker – Kawasaki’s H1
500 triple. The latter seems to have been a short-lived enterprise as even the ubiquitous Google struggles to find viable references but, apparently, they did exist, if only briefly.
Perhaps the most famous has to be the Paul Dunstall marque that successfully morphed from British bikes to Japanese and, most notably, Suzukis. Firms such as Dyson and
FLF made kits for the smaller Kawasaki triples and many Yamaha dealers bought in a range of components to create in-house specials – Granby Motors and HamYam being two well-recognised names.
Another firm offering such hardware became synonymous with the genre: Sondel Sport.
This London-based firm could offer fairings, screens, footrests, faux TZ seat units, clipons or ace bars, ARE cast alloy wheels and, of course, the obligatory J&R expansion chambers, all aimed at the RD250/350 model range and marketed as Shadows. Making sure no one was left out, similar kits were available for the 125/200s and possibly the Fizzies as well. Due to Yamaha’s canny development programme, the larger-capacity RD kits could also be readily fitted to older YDS7 and YR5 models as well as providing a new lease of life for more mature versions of the tuning fork brand. When the coffin-tanked RDs arrived the kits were revised and marketed as the Manta range and even the XS250/360/400 four-stroke twins were similarly catered for under the Star range. And with the advent of the RD400 the company even managed, with assistance from Yamaha’s off-road back catalogue, to develop a large-capacity engine that bordered on 500cc. Apparently it went like stink but had an appetite for bearings and gearboxes … who would have guessed, eh? It was all a pretty lucrative market and generally fuelled by bikes that were either older, had been crashed or were poorly maintained trade-ins.
Back in the 1970s, bikes were common enough for folk not to be too precious about them. If you’d binned your machine and didn’t want to pay serious money for new tanks/forks/ exhausts and the like, here was an opportunity to revive it as something new. Every town worthy of the title had at least one bike breaker – and possibly several – so a replacement pair of fork stanchions, mudguards, clocks, etc. were there almost for the asking. Many a phoenix-like café racer began life as a Norwich Union Rider Policy insurance write-off buy-back!
With one or two exceptions the Read Titans, Granby, HamYam, Dyson, FLF, and Sondel equipped bikes have totally disappeared. Just very occasionally one might just surface but then they seem to vanish again. It seems as if the genuine period Japanese café racer has acquired the status of persona non grata which really is something of a travesty. The classic scene seems to almost slavishly worship the cult of the Triton, Tri-BSA and Norvin, yet the Oriental take on the theme that generally kept the original engine with its own frame is somehow perceived as a lesser machine. Yes, for sure, the marrying of an engine from one manufacturer with the chassis of another is more graft, but throughout the 1960s there was a hatful of small businesses offering conversion kits for anything that had started life in the Midlands. Many of these backyard abominations were lash-ups at best.
Most Japanese period home builds have been reverse converted back to stock now which is a real shame. We’ve somehow lost sight of the 70s and the wide variety of Oriental metal that was there because we’re looking through rose-tinted visors!