RotaryGeek

My dad just bought me a 1980 honda cx500 bike for $700. Less than 18k origional miles, origional tires and everything. It runs good, except that it needs a new choke cable or its a pain to srtart. This bike has an v-twin style engine, except that it sits sideways in the bike. Kinda cool. Right now the bike is ugly as ----. I hate how it looks with the gigantic seat and little wimpy tires, so those will get tossed quick.

Here is what it looks like now. (Not my bike, same thing almost exactly though)



Ill be buying drag bars for the front end, and upgrade the brakes to a two piston caliper with braided steel lines up front. Dont know what to do about the drums in the rear yet.

This is the rear end ill be putting on it. Looks ten times better than stock. Just need a single seat. Non of this stuff is made exactly for this bike, but for a pretty close model. So im sure ill be doing some fabbing to get it to work right and look good.



Different full bike view. I love the cafe racer look. Very cool IMO.



So what do you think? I like it, and for the bike plus parts is under $1500 and its definetly not something you see every day.

hondarex2323

i always liked the cafe style of the older bikes....good luck....

RotaryGeek

Should be a fun project. Imagine it all flat black with a nice throaty exhaust.... mmm...

seerex

i love the look of those bikes, check out this website
http://www.cb750cafe.com/parts.php

Big Pipe

my old man used to ride a yamaha rz350 two stroke. it was a pretty bad *** little bike

J-SMITH69

don't like it but not too bad

RotaryGeek

Yeah thats the site i have been checking out. Thats where im going to get the rear seatback from.

stillnoturbo

I'm doing a cafe racer right now. I picked up a CM400T for 400 bones this past winter. I've been pulling as much off as possible. The sofa sized seat got majorly hacked up this weekend. Stock seatpan+rear fender+walmart fiberglass kit=gangster single person cafe seat. I hacked up the stock seatpan and welded the fender ontop of the seatpan and covered it in glass. I'm still sanding it down but overall I'm pretty happy. One, because I'm broke and I'm HMT to the fullest and two. I can't really afford the hundred or so they charge for the cafe racer style seats on ebay. I just have to mount on brake light and the licensce plate and it's road ready.

RotaryGeek

post up some pics of that, i am considering doing the same thing with mine. i havent seen any cafe racer seats on ebay yet, but maybe ill take a look around there first.

cornfuzed

those older cafe bikes are wicked fun i had a 1981 kawasaki gpz550 for my first bike, it was good fun
and those cx500's sound wicked like a ducavison (ducati/harley davison)