Honda CB750 Cafe Racer

I'm a regular humble guy and generally good with my hands. By day I'm a control systems engineer (electrical) and in my spare time like to tinker rather than just watch TV.
I've had a few modern sportbikes in the past and gone the last 10 years without one mainly due to family commitments.

Back then it was all about spending the whole day away riding but in recent years, things have slowed down and it’s more about creativity as my artistic side has become more apparent. A cafe racer bike was always on the Wishlist because of the look, the coolness, and the impracticality but I was never really interested in buying one.

Since I love the 80s, the technology, the music, everything, I wanted to create “my own bike” of that era and eventually ended up buying a cheap non-running bike with a box of bits thinking “how hard could it be?” After having no real plan of where I wanted to go with the build, other than lots of looking, researching, watching, thinking and dreaming, things just started to evolve and take shape.

The colour scheme was inspired by a custom Porsche 911 Singer in Absinthe green.  The build process took approximately 1.5 years of my spare time. Initially, it was very overwhelming, thinking “where do I start?”. First came dismantling, bagging and tagging. Then came the modification and fabrication of the rear subframe, and sandblasting of many of the bits. 

The bike got a full strip-down, fresh paint, the brakes were rebuilt, and wheels and suspension were taken care of. The engine’s compression wasn’t too good so I knew it could at least use a top-end rebuild, but thought while we are here, you know, I might as well go all the way. Besides, what did I know about rebuilding engines? Nada, but I was about to learn. I completely tore the engine down. The cylinder bores were checked for roundness and honed, and the head was resurfaced. Replaced rings, bearings, all gaskets and seals. Fully stripped down, cleaned, and rebuild the carburettors, man what a job this was.

I thought about using rear sets but decided to carefully chop up the originals for something unique and still functional. The front shocks were shortened, the original triple clamp was reinforced on the bottom, and the stock bar mounts were ground off for a clean top. A custom made a bracket for the analogue gauges was fitted along with a customs number plate bracket, chain guard, front fender, and choke pull. The fuel tank’s original cap and locking mechanism had to go. The indents were filled and smoothed out with solder and a new custom cap made up for a clean and simple classic look.

A full rewire in conjunction with a Motogadget M-Unit Blue was done. I relocated the battery, rectifier/regulator, spark units and solenoids to the seat pan. A solenoid-operated fuel shut off valve was installed which automatically cuts the fuel when the ignition is off, as coming from modern bikes, I kept forgetting to manually close the fuel petcock after a ride.

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The bike is heavy when compared to something modern of similar capacity even after removing lots of the unwanted equipment but she is old school and that alone is cool. The suspension is firm thanks to the new rear shocks and the shortened, stiffened front forks. Performance from the freshly rebuilt stock engine is good for something from the 80s era with an amazing sound produced from a nicely tuned 4 carburettor engine. Brakes perform reasonably well being dual front disc with dual pot callipers on either side operated via a 17mm master cylinder. 

Find me on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/fiorellogalluzzo/

Cheers,

Fiorello