Bikes that make the best cafes

Swaps, if you want to know what a Hodaka tail light looks like on that seat, look at my GR build. Hell, had I known you were using that seat, I would have shipped you mine.

Anyways, I'll throw my opinion in the mix. Any bike can be made to look / feel faster. It's not about what you start with, but what it becomes after some sweat and blood. Want a small I4? Get a CB350F or CB400F. Lots of potential all around on those. Want a parallel twin? Get whatever you want. With enough work, everything has potential.

Want to have fun? Get a bike and lock yourself in the garage for hours at a time. In 3-12 months you'll get to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
 
twistekeys said:
I'm going to go out on a limb and say the CBX1000 is the top of the food chain. (As a side note I'd pay an easy $20,000 for a cafe CBX)

Inline 4 = harmony. Inline 6 = Chaos.
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WHAT?
 
teazer said:
The bike you are asking about does not exist. It comes down to what do you want and what is available.

For a great Cafe bike, start with Triumph. Norton or Triton. They embody teh cafe racer spirit better than anything else. But they are not cheap or 4's.

Stylistically, 4's don't make great cafe racers because they tend to look fat where a cafe racer should look svelte. That's not to say it can't be done, but this is where it gets to what is your vision? Search the web and come up with a few that talk to you. Long breadbox tanks were great when engines didn't make much power and handling was not understood. Airtech and Glass from the Past (among others) make a variety of long tanks for many different bikes and in many cases they are close to the original styles. Others like Legendary or Benjis Cafe Racer also offer tanks.

For a great tank, think about a custom made alloy tank form ROC city or Asa Moyce at Bartel or John Williams at the Tanks Shop. For a Honds tank, talk to Pete Kyte in the UK. There are others. Budget 500 for a glass tank and 1200-1800 for an alloy tank.

If it must be a 4 look at what's available in your neck of the woods and scour the internet for pictures of modified versions of the bike to see what works and what hurdles there are.

On the other hand if you want to buy a bike, go to a catalog for parts, add paint and polish and flip it, I would suspect that not a lot of people are much interested in helping you to make money.

BTW, back in the day, we rarely cut frames and we "made it our own" by bolting on parts from Dunstall or Bil Chuck or Gus Khun or Reads. No one made their own tank or seat. We rebuilt our bikes with whatever parts we could afford and wanted. And we just kept riding and upgrading and riding and changing and riding.....Rinse and repeat. YMMV.
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Great points, especially the last part, that's the whole point of my current project; doing what I can afford, make it faster, make it better.

By the way, I've never seen a real Triumph let alone a Norton, so I don't think I'll ever be down that alley any time soon :-\ but I can make the best of what I've got here in Utah.
 
Go buy the nicest bike you can. Build the raddest bike you can. Ride it till your smile is so big it cracks your helmet. Buy a new helmet. Ride again.

Forget any preconcieved notions man. Build YOUR bike. Be happy.
 
VonYinzer said:
Go buy the nicest bike you can. Build the raddest bike you can. Ride it till your smile is so big it cracks your helmet. Buy a new helmet. Ride again.

Forget any preconcieved notions man. Build YOUR bike. Be happy.
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8)
 
tear down builds are almost always never put back together...
for every 10 posts on here started by tearing the bike down, you might find one finished.
to really build a performance oriented "cafe" bike, you do pretty last, things get cut off the frame, stuck on differently, changed constantly, tanks and seats are usually installed, then reinstalled, then finally settled in a place where they fit the rider well, the very last step is actually tearing everything apart to paint, polish and make pretty...
 
twistekeys said:
Yeah that's true. I think just working on it is good enough. Correct me if I'm wrong but I see a lot of full on tear down cafe builds. Is that just to make a good looking cafe? Or is that how they did it back in the day? Isn't the point of cafes handling and speed?
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Like a good politician I have to say Yes and No.

Full on tear downs are mainly because people think that's what they have to do because that's what they see and it looks inspiring. Yes to the idea that cafe racers emulate (copy) race bikes of the period, but they don't need a strip down and "build" to get there. We used to change ours bit at a time as the cash became available. If we stripped them down and started hacking bits off we could never afford all the new parts required to get them running.

Get a bike and get it running and work on it over time. Some parts become very expensive very fast which is why a long tank which needs different bars and seat and pegs would be last in a long list. We'd start with say lighter shorter fenders or maybe a change to the footpegs and then bars and then maybe we'd move the instruments and then we'd get a seat and maybe modify the exhaust.

Those are all weekend jobs that don't have the bike off the road for months at a time. Don't follow my example and try multiple builds from the ground up at the same time. I also have a street bike that I don't mess with so I always have something to ride. When I have one bike, all jobs have to be small jobs.

A revised exhaust I can do in the evenings one week or I can fit a different tail light without taking it off the road. That matches my budget better and means I never have a pile of parts taunting me.
 
The term cafe to me is just a look, just like the term brat, bobber, street fighter, chopper, cruiser etc.
None of them refer to performance, only a look. So there is no real answer to the question...
So pick a bike and make it look like the rest of the bikes in that category. ;D
 
The only reason to completely tear a bike completely down is something is seriously wrong or you are going completely radical in design. My bike is half torn apart right now. The only reason is, I laid it down last year. Most of the bits that I wanted to change were damaged in the wreck. Once I was healthy enough to start working on it, I did. Life got in the way and now I am back on it hard and heavy. My bike won't be pretty for a while. I have dumped a bunch of money in a $450 runner and have a bunch yet to spend.
 
lingo said:
The only reason to completely tear a bike completely down is something is seriously wrong or you are going completely radical in design. My bike is half torn apart right now. The only reason is, I laid it down last year. Most of the bits that I wanted to change were damaged in the wreck. Once I was healthy enough to start working on it, I did. Life got in the way and now I am back on it hard and heavy. My bike won't be pretty for a while. I have dumped a bunch of money in a $450 runner and have a bunch yet to spend.
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QFT.

I originally took my engine out to fix a bad seal and then it spiraled into a huge project. The cases needed to be split and then the next thing I knew it was getting another 174cc's, a modern front end, new swingarm, new wheels, all cafe stuff, custom harness, pods and a fairing. Honestly I wouldn't do it again unless I had a few other running bikes and lots of time.
 
i think allot of people kind of miss what a cafe was.. it was nothing more then a bike you could afford to buy..
and race from pub to pub (ie cafes) this was done by making it lighter.. then making things tighter.. and faster.. but kept cheap.. these were generally Brit bikes as this is were the life sytle started..


now i personally look at cafe racers much like i would look at the old hot rod days..
does not matter what you drove.. its the life style..
what ever does not make it go fast or stop fast.. you chopped it off.. cleaned it up
and raced it.. for money and for bragging rights..
it really does not matter what bike or rod you buy
its what you can afford to buy and what you can get your hands on it.

I have 3 bikes, Harley, Yamaha, Honda
i treat them all the same.. they have all different fucntions but non the less are all about
a feeling i get when spending time working on them.. riding them.. and spending time with my friends with them..

dont get stuck in an notion on what you think you have to have to be concidered a real cafe racer..
as really its nothing more then a mind set and life style..
at the end of the day.. its about droping your sholders and tucking the knees and turning the throttle.
 
Walms said:
The term cafe to me is just a look, just like the term brat, bobber, street fighter, chopper, cruiser etc.
None of them refer to performance, only a look. So there is no real answer to the question...
So pick a bike and make it look like the rest of the bikes in that category. ;D
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Or... derive alittle from each. There are no rules. Only ones that you metastasize...
 
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