This 1981 Honda CB750 has been reworked by Michael Mundy and the talented team over at Steel Bent Customs, as with most of their custom bikes, it’s sale price was in the $8,000 USD region – making it a highly affordable vintage cafe racer.
This beautiful Triumph Bonneville by Dime City Cycles is currently being given away to benefit an orphanage in Peru, the competition is open to a full international audience and it even includes free shipping to your current country of residence.
The Kawasaki GT550 was fitted with a DOHC transverse, 4-cylinder, air-cooled engine with a total capacity of 553cc, it could produce 58hp at 9,000rpm and some claim it could top out above 140mph. Power was fed to the rear wheel via a shaft drive and a 6-speed transmission, making it a slightly unusual bike for the early 1980s.
This incredible Ural Racer is a creation from the mind of Joao Alves, it’s based on a stock 2013 Ural Solo sT but I think you’ll agree, the finished bike looks like a totally new creature. Joao has given the Ural Racer a beautiful mid-70s fairing, a studded cafe racer seat, a 2-into-2 chopped exhaust, a set of clip-on handlebars and an entirely new personality.
The Honda CB750 is quite easily one of the top 10 most important motorcycle models of the 20th century. Now, I know that that’s a very big of a big claim to make, so let me back it up with some history before we continue any further.
The CB550 was only produced between 1974 and 1978, its predecessor was the CB500 and it was succeeded by the CB650 all of these bikes were offered under the price point of the iconic CB750 and all of them seem to have developed their own groups of dedicated fans, many of them are finding a second wind as project builds with interesting and creative conversions to cafe racer/scrambler/tracker/Brat-style bikes.
The Honda CX500 is like a feisty featherweight boxer who’ll take on anyone and will never, ever back down. The model was first released in 1978 and it was fitted with a series of innovative features that were either uncommon or totally unused at the time, things like…
This Triton is a slightly unusual, modern take on the classic hybrid. It’s been built using a 1954 Norton Featherbed frame but instead of a 40 year old Triumph parallel twin, he’s using a 3 year old 865cc twin from the modern Bonneville.
The Triton is one of those motorcycles that every man should own at least once in their lives. The bike is the famous combination of the Norton Featherbed frame and the Triumph parallel-twin engine, often with a slew of other aftermarket parts all designed to make it go as fast as an air-cooled, vintage British twin can possibly manage.
The Yamaha XS360 is an interesting motorcycle, the model never saw a huge production run and were, in many respects, the slightly smaller brother of the much more famous Yamaha XS400.
Michael Mundy, the proprietor of Steel Bent Customs, has a penchant for building some of the cleanest cafe racer motorcycles you’ll find anywhere. He tends to favour the Honda CB750 and has now got the process of turning the bike from a lumbering over-weight bike into an exceedingly clean, pure example of what a cafe racer can be if the builder sticks to the core of what the genre originally entailed.