How it started...

We have always had a soft spot for Cafe Racers, but our business has always led us to be at the forefront of motorcycle racing development.

Thats why when this 1976 Honda CB750 fell in our laps we jumped at the oppurtunity. A friend of ours offered to trade it in for a race suit and some race boots. Having never seen the bike and not knowing anything other than the fact that we were pretty sure we could build something really cool with it we gladly accepted.

What we ended getting delivered to us shortly after a late spring snowfall was a bit of a shocker!

The entire bike was an amalgamation of bad taste and poor decisions. Everything from the seat, crash bars, trailer hitch (?!?!) to the jaw dropping airbrushed beach scene.

After having a good laugh at the task at hand we put the bike in a spot in the shop for when we had some free time between jobs to put it together.

Taking a closer look at what we got.....

After having the bike sit around for a few months during a very busy spring we finally got some time to get started on it.

This plan for this bike is to have a custom made aluminum tank and seat to keep with the retro theme of the original cafe racers we love. What will make this different is that we will be outfitting the bike with race spec suspension, engine mangagment, engine build brakes and the same high attention to detail that we put into our famous streel legal supersport builds.

First order of business was to strip off all the "accesories" that the previous owner had decieded to install. We removed the wiring harness, lights, fuel tank, seat.

The basic bones of the bike underneath were actually very good.

As we will be doing a big bore kit on the engine, grafting a full modern Ohlins suspenion system, wheels, tires, chain, sprocket. Short of having a rusted/damagedframe there really wasn't anything that would have been a reason for concern.

Test Fitting our custom seat and tank...

First order of buiness was mocking up our custom made polished aluminum tank and seat to make sure that they fit perfectly before we started going further with the project.....Also we were very excited to see if they pieces looked as good in real life on the bike as they did in the sketches and concept phase.

The pieces were all custom designed just for this particular build. The tank is styled after a Lyta fuel tank but adapted to fit on the CB750 frame. We had a recess built into the tank so that we can house the battery and electrical out of view.

The seat has been designed to house a relocated oil tank and battery. This will allow the build to continue with a cleaner look, by moving the oil tank out from view.

Removing the front and rear suspension..

We pulled the front and rear suspension and started making some measurements for our swing arm and front forks.

We will machine the swing arm to fit within the CB750 frame, this will require quite a bit of machine work, but should make for a very clean finished product.

After taking some measurements we decided to make our own steering stem from scratch to mate the 2012 ZX6R front end onto the CB750 frame. Trying to machine the stock zx6r stem to fit the CB750 frame, although possible would cause concern about the thickness of the steering stem.

Follow along as we show you an overview of everything we do to create our version of a cafe racer!