“I put a tricked out H1 engine with the left and right cylinders reversed into a Framecrafters road race frame and put lights on it.” This was the cryptic message we recently from Mike McSween […]
Tag: Cafe Racers
Budget-Built: $1250 Honda CB650 by Redeemed Cycles
A $1250 (!) brat / cafe racer from North Carolina… While we love to drool over high-dollar bike builds as much as anyone, we’ve always been drawn to bikes built within a reasonable budget, and […]
Yamaha XSR700 “Cafe Tracker” by Espiat
The Yamaha XSR700 was designed with the help of none other than Shinya Kimura of Chabott Engineering, one of the world’s most esteemed custom builders. Yamaha wished to build from the classic aesthetics of the […]
Track Racer: Yamaha RD350 by Moto Exotica
The Yamaha RD350 is one of our favorite two-stroke street bikes, a 39-horsepower parallel twin that featured Autolube oil injection and a similar frame to the Yamaha TZ350 racer. In most countries, the bike was […]
Honda CJ250/360 Cafe Racer by Elemental Custom Cycles
The Honda CJ series was a stripped-down, less expensive offshoot of the better-known CB/CL series. For instance, the CJ360T featured a five-speed transmission instead of the six-speed box on the CB360, along with a front […]
Descending Dragon: BMW R75/5 “HaLong”
Introduced in 1970, the R75/5 was the largest BMW motorcycle of the time, offering a 750cc, 50-horsepower boxer engine capable of pushing the machine to 110 mph. The entire “Slash 5” or “/5” series, which […]
“Hurricane”: BMW Flying Brick Café Racer
The BMW K100 “Flying Brick” represented a significant design leap for BMW Motorrad, who’d long been known for their flat-twin “airhead” engine design. The K100, in contrast, was a fuel-injected, liquid-cooled inline four laid flat […]
BMW K100 “Shahin” by Mehdi Barakchian
An ’87 Flying Brick dragged “kicking and screaming” into 2019… The BMW K100, introduced in 1982, benefited from the company’s many years of experience building liquid-cooled, overhead cam, inline automobile engines. The fuel-injected, 95-hp engine was […]
Aviation-Grade: Honda CB350 Restomod by Merlin Cycleworks
What happens when a jet aircraft mechanic builds his wife a bike… The Honda CB350 twin is not only one of the company’s best-selling models, but one of today’s most popular vintage bikes for customization. […]
Honda CB350 Cafe Commuter by Kevin Bergeron
The Honda CB350 is one of the most beloved small twins of all time, a 36-hp scrapper that recalled the old adage: “It isn’t the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size […]
