Finding a project bike

I can’t remember exactly when I decided to build a custom bike but what I do remember is how long it took to find a shop/garage that was big enough for our projects. “We” meaning my wife an I, both in our 50s and with the same interests in many things. So we decided to start a project each. She also will document her project here.

What project?

Somehow I always liked the cafe racer style and philosophy. Basically cafe racers are serial bikes that have been converted to sport bikes. How do you do that? Take away everything, that not really neccessary to make the bike light. Replace serial parts with parts that are characteristic for racing. Make sure the bike looks esthtetic in the end. Done.

Easier said than done. Take a look at all the interpretations, possibilities, fails and you will quickly know what I mean.

The cafer racer scene is really wide spread along bikes of all ages. What I like is the classic style so I am concentrating on classic bikes. From what I can say concnerning classical bikes Honda CB models seam to be the most common customized bikes around, followed by Yamahas SR.

I spent 100s of hours on google, instagram, youtube and so on to find inspiration for a project. I found some really cool blogs, website and youtube channels from guys all over the world (yeah, no girls out there in the custom world, it seams) who put a lot of heart and loads of knowledge in their projects. I wrote to some and each and everyone was willing to share their expertise about everything I asked them.

Long story short: I got stuck with the Honda CB. One important reason is: I’m a rookie and there are tons of information out there and experts who have solved every problem that could occur at least twice. So now that that is decided: where do I get a bike?

To be honest, I quickly gave up on asking friends, neighbors, colleagues etc. So I started looking on ebay and ebay classifieds. If it’s not too exotic you can find every model from every year here. There obviously is a market there for these bikes, but somehow those “project bikes” a very rare. I missed two opportunities on ebay classifieds and actually found one on ebay and won the auction!

Project Link: