CB250RS café racer project

[Bonez]

You, sir, speak the voice of experience. I'm already beginning to smugly tell stories about when I seized my top end, and crap on about how I wrestled the engine back together with my sheer manly brute strength. I must be becoming a biker.

Wrestling a CB750 engine into the frame at 2 in the morning by ones self then removing and stripping it again is fun.

[jonbuoy]

Bugger mate - I see supercheap have some budget plastic verniers - might be handy for the future.

[xwhatsit]

Bugger mate - I see supercheap have some budget plastic verniers - might be handy for the future.

Lol yes. But when has anybody seen me listen to common sense?


Got a set of little grinding thingies from Mitre 10 today, that you just put on the end of your electric drill. Thanks for that advice, Ixion, never knew those existed before now.

Duct-taped up the trigger on the drill, plugged in the battery, sat on the driveway with the drill between my knees and ground the shit out of the RHS clip-on. Took AGES to make any difference -- did a test pass on the GB500 clipons I have (which carved out like cheese), but they seem to be aluminium and these are stainless steel, which is significantly harder. I got somewhere, kept bashing the clipon onto the fork, which showed me where the high spots were (
went from looking like brushed metal to smoother dark stuff), then ground those out. Finally got it ground down enough to tighten the bolts up. Now the RHS is rock solid. The LHS one still needs doing -- I ran out of time due to over-dismantling my throttle and spending roughly 20-30 minutes trying to get the cable reattached to the rotating bit.

Wo0o0o0o0o0! I've got proper handlebars! This is very exciting for me

[Dodgyiti]

Well done, some longer bolts for the clamps are not needed now?
As long as there is one thread sticking out the end of the nut is ok when tight.

I am loathed to tell you there is a Moto-Guzzi guy that sells Tommaselli stuff in NZ. He can sort you out with the headlight brackets to match the clipons, just biff that Honda item out and get a chrome H4 aftermarket light, and some blingdicators as tiny as they make them to go either side of the light. Might as well get 4 so the rear ones match (about $30 a set Trade me- MrsMojo)
A Mk1 Guzzi fairing new is $90 + screen $60 + brackets x 2 = $23
Total= $173
Result----->>

[Dodgyiti]

Note that cafe racers never have fairings. Or windscreens.

Then what is a Dunstall Norton, Hyde Triumph, Moto-Guzzi Mk1 LeMans, Egli Vincent, Harris CB750 etc etc

I view Cafe Racers as stripped, drilled and lightened with rearsets and clipons. Some bikes need the bikini fairing because the gauge pod is unable to function after a splash of water, ahem... especially DodgyItalians

[xwhatsit]

I tend to agree with you there, Dodgyiti, w.r.t. the fairings. Although perhaps a pure café mightn't have a fairing, the very small bikini ones seem to have slipped into the lexicon. I don't think I'll have one myself, I like the super lightweight look.

That's a cool looking Guzzi there, Dodgyiti! It's not yours, is it? Don't be loath to mention the Tommaselli guy, do you have some details for him? If the brackets are $23, that's diddly squat, really.

Where does one buy an aftermarket chrome H4 light?

[Ixion]

The cafe racer was a product of the 1950s and 60s. The Ace itself closed in 1969, the end of the cafe era and the end of the cafe racer era. Bikes in the 50s and 60s, even racing ones did not usually have fairings. There were a very few rare exceptions (the Vincent Black Knight, and the Velo Veelines) but they were designed for protection from the elements , not speed.

There's no reason why you CAN'T put a fairing on a cafe racer, but it departs from the purity of the genre. Same as eg a Honda four cylinder. Nothing wrong with it, but the true cafe racer has no more than two cylinders.

Most of the examples you mention of "faired cafe racers" are really after the era, post 1969. I'm not sure what you would call them, Super Sports maybe.

[xwhatsit]

The cafe racer was a product of the 1950s and 60s. The Ace itself closed in 1969, the end of the cafe era and the end of the cafe racer era. Bikes in the 50s and 60s, even racing ones did not usually have fairings. There were a very few rare exceptions (the Vincent Black Knight, and the Velo Veelines) but they were designed for protection from the elements , not speed.

There's no reason why you CAN'T put a fairing on a cafe racer, but it departs from the purity of the genre. Same as eg a Honda four cylinder. Nothing wrong with it, but the true cafe racer has no more than two cylinders.

Most of the examples you mention of "faired cafe racers" are really after the era, post 1969. I'm not sure what you would call them, Super Sports maybe.

Dunstall isn't really café, is it? Strong caffeine-ish leanings, but it's really only some of the products they manufactured that were used for caffeinated bikes -- Dunstall Decibels

Farings don't look out of place, though, at least in the modern interpretation of such a category. One would look strange on a Triton, I think.

I'm trying to get rid of as much shit as I can above the clipons. Hence, the speedo will be replaced with Bungbung's round one mounted where the original bars were attached. Headlight will of course be much lower. Mirrors are out of the way on the end of the bars. A fairing would spoil that. If I got one, it would only be for purely cosmetic reasons -- I don't tour far on my bike, and the wind makes me feel more connected to the riding experience.

Pod filter. EMGO reverse cone silencer. A re-jet, of course -- where can I find information on how much to increase the jet sizes?

I'd love to run a velocity stack, but that's probably not wise in terms of engine longevity.

[Ixion]

People used to mount the speedo on the fork slider. Legal, strictly speaking. Vulnerable, though.

[xwhatsit]

Lol, wot? How the hell am I supposed to see it all the way down there?

[Ixion]

Well, I think that the folk who did that weren't very concerned about seeing it. Just having one to comply with the law. Though Vincents used to mount it there as standard. But back in those days a speedo was an optional extra, cost you several guineas more if you wanted on. You still don't need one on a pre 1948 bike.

[xwhatsit]

Hahaha. I'd quite like to see mine, especially after my encounter with the policemen. Although I mostly know how fast I'm going by the sound of the motor.

True or false: a velocity stack, even covered in some metallic mesh, will kill my engine.

[Ixion]

By "velocity stack" do you mean a bell mouth? Why will it kill the engine? You may nee dto rejet and of course engine wear may be increased due to dust and grit and insects being sucked into the engine. Though I suspect that the problem is not anywhere near as bad nowdays as people think, now that we no longer have gravel roads (or the dreaded pumice)

[xwhatsit]

By "velocity stack" do you mean a bell mouth? Why will it kill the engine? You may nee dto rejet and of course engine wear may be increased due to dust and grit and insects being sucked into the engine. Though I suspect that the problem is not anywhere near as bad nowdays as people think, now that we no longer have gravel roads (or the dreaded pumice)

Yep, bell mouth thingie. Yes, I was worried about the complete lack of filtration.

Read a story recently about a scooter rider who bought for his first bike a beautiful balls-out twin-carb Triton . He used it to commute through London traffic (!?). It had bell-mouths on the carbs and he got scared about little children putting marbles into the intakes or something, so he put some steel mesh over them.

I do lots of oil changes anyway, due to the whole no oil filter thing, which would get rid of some of the shit floating around in the motor. I love the look of a naked carb, and having even less restriction to flow has got to help power somewhere. Probably only at about 10,000 rpm, of course.

[Ixion]

They usually had a coarse wire mesh. Mainly to prevent leaves and such like being sucked in.

The "factory cafe racers" such as the Norton International, BSA Gold Star, Velo Thruxton usually had an Amal GP carb (the GP stood for Goddamn Pig). I don't think I ever saw those with anything other than a bell mouth.

Main downside is extra cylinder wear from dust and grit.