Deus Ex Machina has a refreshingly heretical approach to cafe racer building, this bike is one of their latest creations and you can tell at a glance that it’s a signature, antipodean cafe belter.
The team at Deus have a long held love of the Yamaha SR500, it’s a single cylinder Japanese thumper designed in the late 70s, interestingly it was only the second 4-stroke engine design Yamaha had ever developed. They kept the engineering as simple as possible, there’s one valve in and one valve out with a single carburettor and a bullet-proof 5-speed transmission.
With this cafe creation, dubbed the Cherry Cafe, Deus stripped the original bike back to save weight, then painted the frame cherry-red. They added a custom seat, rear cowling and front cowling, then added Tingate clip-on handlebars, a CR round slide carburettor and stainless steel fenders on the front and back.
Ben Branch has had his work featured on CNN, Popular Mechanics, the official Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with millions of readers around the world and hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
This film is a little different to many that I’ve featured here on Silodrome in the past, there’s no commentary or sound of any kind, just 17 (and a bit) minutes of people sending their motorcycles up a hillside somewhere in the USA in the 1930s. The machines are mostly American V-twins from Harley-Davidson and…
This article was written by Paul Brace, a life-long bike enthusiast with a background in professional engineering and restoration, including the design and construction of the Eagle E-Type Speedster. I was looking for a lovely 916 for years but ‘the one’ never turned up. I would have been very happy with an exceptional standard 916…
The television show Torque was an Australian institution, watched religiously by petrolheads in the country throughout the 1970s. The show was presented by Peter Wherrett, now remembered as an Australian icon, whose review could make or break a car – a bad review from Wherrett could be the death knell for a new model. This…
This custom Yamaha XSR700 is the work of Hookie Co., a German workshop that have become world-leaders in the field of developing and selling kits that allow people to customise their motorcycles at home using simple hand tools. So far, Hookie Co. have developed multiple Moto-Kits for the BMW R nineT and the new one…
The 1982 SuperBikers Race was a made-for-TV special event thought up by the team at ABC’s Wide World of Sports. In short, the race was a work of genius. Over the course of a single lap the riders would encounter road racing conditions on tarmac, flat track-style conditions, then motocross conditions before passing the start/finish line…
The Yamaha SC500 was a motocross bike that quickly became world famous for its exceptionally challenging handling. Talented riders could barely tame it, but most others were left either flying off the back or popping accidental power-wheelies every time they crashed into the razor thin power band. The Yamaha SC500 When it was launched in 1973…
