!! Cafe Racer - Concept Comes To Life !!

[conabree]

I hope there'll be a section for this on the forums one day.. but for now, I have something to share with you all. Especially Sportscarpat, Journeyman, Kip and Venice.

I started out with a Minelli italian bike frame and she looked a bit guido..so I painted her black and added some monarch replica forks. I also used smaller wheels to get the wheelbase to look wider.

 

[conabree]

Then the vintage fibreglass gas tank came off the 'bay' for around 80 bucks. and the seat pan is fabbed sheet metail and 3/4'' plywood painted black.

I love spending other people's money muahahahaha....my friend liked the idea so much, she's paying me to build it for her, so it's getting finished before my boardtrack

 

[conabree]

I domed the sheet metal and drilled some holes to bolt it to the seat pan. After fitting the tank, I decided that the pan was too long, so I cut it down. I used some perforated steel to do two things, hold the cafe style fairing in place, and also to attach lights or fenders in future. (see images)



After paint and attachment, I sewed a seat cushion from brown faux-leather vinyl and attached it with adhesive velcro (just incase I needed to access the bracket bolts later on).

 

[conabree]

Again, the headlight and clubman bars (which need to be cut shorter) are off of eBay as well. The headlight is masssivveee (from an old honda goldwing apparently lol)

The tank's all cleaned out and ready for paint, although I'm still finding a hard time figuring out how to mount it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. In the second picture, you can see that I've fabbed some sheet metal attaching to the front fender to make a vintage cafe-style license plate.

And in picture three, I've done custom tank emblems for my mock-company 'Mackinnon Cycles' (after my grandmother's maiden name). The boar's head with the deer shank in its mouth is actually our family crest. And no, I haven't been in business since '86... That's the year I was born

 

[conabree]

the tank should be painted by this weekend, and the motor came today (it's tough working from home this week ) Hope y'all like it.

 

[K.i.p]

That's pretty cool! Nice to see you going from concept to reality. Good luck as you move forward.

 

[K-dregg]

Yeah i agree..! It looks like you´re of to a good start..! You should beef up the wheels with some fat tyres, maybe 24 inch thick bricks..

 

[jcchappy]

that thing is gonna be killer! A little smaller tank is due in my view but it is awesome looking. I have built cafe' racer motorcycles but never thought to build a MB cafe'..

 

[Venice Motor Bikes]

Perty kewl!

 

[hassoun]

I'll be watching this. Any updates?

 

[Egor]

Pretty cool I wanted to build one and show up at the SpookTooth races with one. I also used to build cafe motorcycles back in the day. I was thinking of doing one like one of the kridler or Suzuki 50cc GP bikes from the 60's. Looks cool, have fun, Dave

 

[kipharley]

Very nice start!Keep us posted.Tank mounted?Pics.I'd try to build off original locations.
It's nice to see members thinking out of the"Box".
I haven't thought in the "Box"since I excaped from it!!Kip.
[email protected]

 

[taylorv817]

Any udpdates? I really wanted to build one like this with a vtwin vanguard engine.