Never a big fan of Honda, but of course the Honda CB is a favorite of the cafe racer community and this one was hard to resist at a little over $1000 as apparently it ran, though not when I turned up to buy it. It had been turned into some kind of custom cafe racer/bobber type POS by a local bike shop in Flagstaff, but the work was shoddy to say the least. Nevertheless, the chance to finally get a Honda CB750 and discover other cafe racer's fascination for this bike was too much of a temptation.
WATCH IT ALL UNFOLD / UNRAVEL ON YOU TUBE
With the overall condition being poor and tired original I decided to get really ambitious with this project and research a front end swap. Initial investigation seemed to indicate that a late 90's Suzuki GSXR set of forks should fit with only the need for some adaptive bearings, readily available from All Balls Racing. More on that later.
More research and more tear down got me looking at the whole oil tank delete situation, the starter motor had already been disconnected but not removed so no advantage weight wise gained. The oil tank is an expensive work around and having invested in the front end swap I decided not to remove it. I also wanted to recomission the starter motor, retaining the kick start as per the original.
Having used the cafe racer style seat from this bike on the Suzuki GS550, I turned to the pillion seat left over from the MV Agusta 750F4 project, unsold on ebay. I decided this would work well but would require a completely custom frame/base which could get complicated. Inspired by others who have created seats from wood I set about a prototype wooden seat. A new material to be working with, with advantages and disadavantages of course.
The front fork swap turned out to be a little less straightforward than my research had led me to believe, but undeterred I carried on and with the helpof a local motorcycle mechanical wizard we devised our own method of fitting it, leaving out the first top nut and relying on the top yoke nut to keep everything in place with the new bearings and seals makig this seemingly a viable alterative solution.
The fuel tank was another question mark. Having experienced a lot of work to get a reasonable finish on the Suzuki the Honda tank looked like the same work all over again and quite a large cumbersome tank for a sleek café racer look. Investigating alternatives online led me to discover a number of complete, painted fuel tanks, with all the fittings, fuel tap, locakbkle cap etc. for around the $50 mark, so it seemed rude not to order one. It turned out to be pretty good, though not quite as advertised in that it did not "fit" the Honda CB750. It fitted in as much as pretty much any fuel tank could be made to fit, but it did require shortening the front fixings on the frame and stopped a good few inches short of where the original tank had.
I eventually ended up building a totally custom seat and tail piece using the pillion seat and a pretty radical LED tail light completed the rear end, with new repositioned shocks.
I refurbished both wheels, the original spoked wire wheel from the Honda and the alloy wheel from the GSXR with a really cool old gold wheel paint.
I decided to do something a little different with the engine, painting the cylinders with a blue metallic paint to match the overall paint scheme and the rest of the motor a more traditional semi gloass black. The finishing touch was to fit an all new Delkevic custom exhaust system, a very popular and good quality after market exhaust system for the Honda CB750.
An LED headlight unit from Australia completed the electrics and front end with the customary clip on drop bars, new anodized allot levers and a GPS speedometer.
The fuel tank situation was resolved by repositioning the petcock and the custom paint job is one of my favorites to date, with the silver base overlaid with anodized blue feathered to fade. I sued stickers to mask out the logo and removed them after the paint, before applying a 2K clear coat to finish the job
This 1978 Honda CB750 Cafe Racer Custom Motorcycle Build is still on of my favorites of the bikes I have created so far, with a lot of totally custom fabricated elements. The guy who bought the bike, soon after its completeion, described it as "a work of art" which was nice to hear.
