Hi there, let me start by sayin hello to you all, this is my second post here and my first cafe racer (or any bike) build. My name is Brian and I am 22 years old, and absolutely love the style of cafe bikes. Only problem is I don't have a lot of money to spend, so I'll be at the mercy of the almighty dollar.
I started this project spur of the moment, I had been looking at bikes that fit the image I had in my head of what the bike should be. I ended up finding a 78 GS550 for $650 on Craigslist in great shape and decided to buy it.
The look I wanted was inspired by old school show cars.
I apologize for the lack of pictures, my old phone died and took almost all of the progress pictures with it.
I started with a stock bike, that looked like this:
And within a couple of days, after I got all the bugs worked out (it started running on two cylinders shortly after the ride home), it looked like this:
Now I skipped a lot of things, but mainly I just chopped the frame at the back about 7" and welded in a couple of steel plates to mount the seat pan to. I bought some clip-on bars and 2.5" gauges for it, so I had to see how it would look!
The seat pan I made at work (we have a sheet metal shop so I could roll 14 ga stainless and tig weld it), so I eliminated all the hinges and locks on the seat so It can just use bolts now.
After I had everything mocked up the bike was taken completely apart, sanded, by hand, not sandblasted and prepped for paint. Every aluminum piece including all the bolts were all polished by hand on a bench grinder or with a drill. I decided on my color scheme and used house of kolors paints. My fiancées dad has painted a few classic cars and does a very nice job. So after weeks of sanding and buffing and fingers bleeding it was finally ready for paint. Here are some pictures of a couple of pieces that were polished, and the paint job i taped out.
Everything aluminum on the bike looked like this:
and after a little polish, a little elbow grease and a whole lot of time, everything came out really well.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - now Free
I started this project spur of the moment, I had been looking at bikes that fit the image I had in my head of what the bike should be. I ended up finding a 78 GS550 for $650 on Craigslist in great shape and decided to buy it.
The look I wanted was inspired by old school show cars.
I apologize for the lack of pictures, my old phone died and took almost all of the progress pictures with it.
I started with a stock bike, that looked like this:
And within a couple of days, after I got all the bugs worked out (it started running on two cylinders shortly after the ride home), it looked like this:
Now I skipped a lot of things, but mainly I just chopped the frame at the back about 7" and welded in a couple of steel plates to mount the seat pan to. I bought some clip-on bars and 2.5" gauges for it, so I had to see how it would look!
The seat pan I made at work (we have a sheet metal shop so I could roll 14 ga stainless and tig weld it), so I eliminated all the hinges and locks on the seat so It can just use bolts now.
After I had everything mocked up the bike was taken completely apart, sanded, by hand, not sandblasted and prepped for paint. Every aluminum piece including all the bolts were all polished by hand on a bench grinder or with a drill. I decided on my color scheme and used house of kolors paints. My fiancées dad has painted a few classic cars and does a very nice job. So after weeks of sanding and buffing and fingers bleeding it was finally ready for paint. Here are some pictures of a couple of pieces that were polished, and the paint job i taped out.
Everything aluminum on the bike looked like this:
and after a little polish, a little elbow grease and a whole lot of time, everything came out really well.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - now Free
