Reader Ride! Fantastic CB550 Cafe Racer!

Update: I've corrected the post title to reflect the fact that this is a 550 and not a 500. Yes I knew that. I tell my daughter that rushing causes errors. I should take my own advice I suppose.

I love builds like this Eric sends in this outstanding garage built CB500 Cafe Racer. His solution to the spoked wheel / modern fork combination is something a lot of folks are looking for.

Eric Writes:

Hi Steve,

I cranked up the res on my camera and snapped some more pics yesterday afternoon; I hope these look a little better. I also included a pic that I took when I first picked it up just to give you an idea of where I started from.

As far as the mods go, I fitted a set of forks from a 2004 GSX-R 600, using a Harley narrow glide wheel which fit surprisingly well between the calipers; it was almost a plug-n-play operation. The rotors are 320mm units from a Hayabusa which required 10mm spacers underneath the calipers. The eBay front end also came complete with clipons & controls so I decided to go ahead and use them; the right control wouldn't fit with the bar-end mirror so I binned it in favor of a Motion Pro throttle assembly and start/kill switch from an R6.

I cut everything off of the frame just aft of the shock mounts and welded on a hoop made from some old handlebars I had laying around; the battery & other electrics were mounted to the new rear hoop and hidden underneath the bumstop. All unneeded brackets & tabs were shaved from the frame before dropping it off for powdercoating. The rearsets are Tarozzi universals mounted to the passenger peg mounts. The rear wheel is a Harley 3.5x18 rim that I laced to the 550 hub with Buchanan stainless spokes.

I popped the top end off the engine and freshened it up a bit with a set of 59mm pistons and camshaft from a SOHC CB650 for a little extra oomph. Once it was back together, I laid on a few coats of Duplicolor's engine primer & enamel. For the exhaust, I welded a pair of merged collectors to an old set of 4-2 headers and finished them off with a pair of repro Commando peashooters.

I'm a big fan of the DIY method so I'm fairly proud to say that with the exception of the cylinder machining and powdercoating, everything on the bike was "garage built" by myself.

So that's probably a little more than you needed (or wanted) to know, but I hope it's helpful. Let me know if you have any questions or if there's anything else you need.

Thanks!
Eric


My kinda bike! Much appreciated Eric!