Coffee + Bikes: The Perfect Combination
Ian Davis is the founder of Blip Roasters, a premier coffee roaster in the West Bottoms of Kansas City, Missouri. Blip has been building a community based around coffee, motorcycles, and sustainability. Their philosophy is music to our ears:
“Riding moves us through life, and coffee is our opportunity to re-align during the curves thrown by the daily grind.”
Recently, we caught sight of Ian’s 1976 Honda CB550 Four while he was blasting through Tennessee alongside Danielle Vee, moto-goddess extraordinaire. We were immediately struck by those wide vintage-style enduro bars, that stubby subframe, and the beautiful paint job by Nick Rodriguez of NRodzOriginals. Here was a build we had to have on the blog!
Ian built the bike with Anchor Moto, a custom chopper shop in Kansas City. Ricky Anchor was kind enough to give us the full scoop on the build.
Honda CB550 Brat/Tracker: In the Builder’s Words
The major portion of the build was actually the motor. Ian’s bike was leaking and just real crusty. This was the catalyst for the redo. I tore down the entire bike to the ground. I rebuilt the top end with fresh rings, valve job, new timing chain, and new gaskets everywhere.
From there the frame got chopped up a little. I moved the loop that was already on it and moved it forward 6 inches to get the short subframe proportions correct. Cut a seat pan out and put the foam I always use on it. A local upholstery shop did the design I drew for them and also did the cross bar pad.
I cut a section of Model A spare tire ring for the rear fender. Then molded it in around the frame rail. Ian spent some afternoons at my shop doing some of the shit work. Like grinding tabs off, smoothing out rails, and really giving the bike a good cleaning.
Nick Rodriguez did the amazing paint job on the tank and fender. This paint made the whole build come together and pushed us to get the bike to the caliber of the paint.
Once the frame was painted we started with the delicate operation of putting everything back together. Clean. Polish, loctite, repeat. Every part was done this way. I wired the entire bike and had it running proper after check the timing and set up the points correctly.
Bike runs flawless and really is a good handling motorcycle. Done on a budget but nothing was overlooked. We found some vintage style mx bars and put new controls up front for a more seamless look and they perform better.
My shop is called Anchormoto. Been building bikes for 13 years and do everything from bikes like Ian’s to full blown vintage Harley choppers. I’ll do service and general problem solving on any bike pre-1980. There are plenty of other shops that can work on new bikes I really like and only have love for vintage cycles.
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Hat tip to Danielle Vichinsky for turning us onto this build!
