Ians Ramblings

Had a great day today, picked up my cheeky lil Honda 550F Supersport. It was a good drive back though brakes have certainly come on a long way in the last 33 years I can tell you, though in fairness they weren’t that much worse than my ’99 Sachs roadster that I had about 7 years ago. It was fun and smooth though, rather relaxing though plebs in Audis still race up behind .. ah well the new chav badge, used to be Subaru.

I have been looking at Cafe racers, in particular those built from classic Hondas for about a year now but also looking through sites trying to find one that could be reliable for almost daily usage or also for doing trips abroad or camping trips / biking events even.

I kept looking at the CB750s initially because so many cafe projects seem to use the CB750 as a base, then I started to see a few CB550 super sports, there were less of them but they were lighter, air cooled and less complex mechanically.

The urge to get a 550 certainly grew when I saw results like this: -

Apart from the seat it’s exactly the look I hope to be going for, quite minor rather cosmetic tweaks only for the time being. I want a slightly more practical seat, that can still accommodate a pillion but still with a cafe racer rounded look, probably all covered rather than with a fibreglass tail.

So it basically begins tomorrow really, I need to remove the main centre stand as it has some damage to it which prevents it working, hopefully that will go well and I will start taking pictures of it as I go along.

If anyone else is looking to do the same kind of thing I found a few great websites on which is everything anyone would want to know about Honda SOHC bikes and cafe racers.

http://forums.sohc4.net/ (Defacto standard in sohc 4 forums)

http://caferacer.forumotion.co (Cafe racer specific forum)

http://jonrwilson.com/CB550/ (one example build from a very rough base)

http://www.bikeexif.com/?s=cafe&sortby=newest (Ideas and inspiration)

I also found this useful link to whole range of manuals: -

http://forums.sohc4.net/index.php?topic=17788.0

Can’t wait for tomorrow, just gutted that it will be the last race of the season. Looks like Lorenzo is flying again this weekend as well as Stoner, it’s a shame Rossi is not up there at the moment in the free practise, but I am sure he will find his form later on.

I hope they will cover his testing on the Ducati, will be really interesting to see how he finds it and whether he picks a screamer or a big bang setup.

In other news, I found a kit that I could put on my Honda NC30, makes it look as good as a MotoGP bike hehe, I think anyway!