Lucky Devil "Root Beer Float" Bobber

This root beer brown bobber was built by Kent Weeks of Lucky Devil Motor Works and presented at the the AMD Wold Championship bike build-off in Long Beach, CA in 2010. The Root Beer Float was built to order for Nyla Olsen of Bikernet. Bikernet has a multi-part series about the bike design and build. 

Colby Higgins Honda CX500 Cafe Build

CX500 Cafe Racer Build

Industrial designer Colby Higgins transformed a rather beatup Honda CX500 cruiser into this very clean and simple cafe racer. More pictures here at his Coroflot portfolio.

Vintage Voodoo Leaf-Spring Front End

Cool retro-vintage styled custom front end from Vintage Voodoo.

Musket V-Twin Royal Enfield, Check Out the Latest News

Musket V-Twin, Royal Enfield Based Special

See the latest news regarding the Musket V-Twin here. The ORDER page is up now!

The Musket is a Royal Enfield special created by industrial engineer Aniket Vardhan. He designed and made casting patterns for a custom bottom end that used two stock Royal Enfield top ends, either 350cc or 500cc, to make a V-twin engine. It's a beautiful piece of work and is meeting with success in the marketplace.

Beautiful Classic Ducati Cafe Racers

Ducati Cafe Racer at Inazuma Caferacer Blog

Absolutely beautiful Ducati cafe racers at one of our favorite motorcycle blogs, Inazuma Caferacer. 

Darizt Design Honda GL100 Boardtracker

Daritz Design GL100

Here's a very cool little Honda with boardtracker styling from Daritz Design of Indonesia, courtesy of Bike EXIF blog.

Awesome Earle Motors Ducati Monster Streettracker Available in Kit Form

Earle Motors Monster Streettracker

Alex Earle and his team at Earle Motors in Venice, CA designed and built this fantastic Ducati Monster-based streettracker. Earle announced last year that his company plans to offer the one-piece fiberglass body, fuel tank, wheels, and headlight assembly to builders in kit form.

We believe that it is available now. Interested riders are directed to contact them at inquiries@earlemotors.com.

Earle says that the bodywork and fuel tank can be easily adapted for Harley Sportsters and Triumphs. Anyone interested in one of those applications is also encouraged to email them for further information.

Classic Cafe Racers from Vicente Design at the Kneeslider Blog

Vicente Cafe Racer, photo credit Kneeslider Blog

The Kneedslider blog featured several of Vicente Design's classic cafe racers a while back. We are impressed with the caliber of his designs and his craftsmanship in execution.

We posted a link a week ago to the feature they did about their Triumph Hurricane tribute bike, along with some associated material, including a link to Hurricane designer Craig Vetter's website.

Deus Ex Machina Yamaha 400 Thumper Scrambler Kit

Deus Ex Machina Yamaha 400 Kit

The crew at Deus has put together a kit for customizing the Yamaha SR400. It's got that vintage XT500 scrambler vibe; think of it as kind of a tribute to that popular classic. They call it a "custom meant to be customized." Put your own spin on it, make it more streettracker than scrambler, for example.

More on the SR400 here.

Here's another builder's take on the XT500 at the Pipeburn blog, this one an actual customized version of the original, from Mark Apland of Thumper Stuff in Monroe, WA.

Voodoo Vintage Custom Bike Frame Builders Kits for Boardtrackers

Voodoo Vintage Model 6 Frame

Voodoo Vintage offers frame kits for custom bikebuilders, including several models with a boardtracker theme. The Model 6 frame shown to here is said to be a known fit for Yamaha XS650, Honda CB350 and CB360, Suzuki LS650, and "many others."

Follow the link above and you will find a download button for detailed specs in Adobe pdf format for the six frames featured, including the Model 12 boardtracker for Sportster and Buell powerplants.

Indian Scout Cafe Racer from Analog Motorcycles

We've been really impressed with the work of designer/builder Tony Prust, proprietor of Analog Motorcycles, as he's developed the last couple of years or so that we've been aware of him and Analog. Now we've just seen this classic, elegant Indian Scout cafe racer at the Bike EXIF blog (one of our all-time favorite motorcycle blogs, by the way). Impressive. Check it out.

Bike EXIF has featured a number of other Tony Prust bikes in the past. I liked this 1971 Triumph 250 based scrambler, it's especially nostalgic for me because my first bike was a 1971 250 in the street model configuration.

How to Build a Cafe Racer

Honda CX500 Cafe Racer

Charles Tregolan is a professional car designer by trade. In his spare time he designs and builds his own bikes. He's written a set of guidelines for cafe racer builders at the Bike EXEF blog.

The guidelines tell the builder how to scale and set the parameters of a cafe racer to give it a professional look; how to size and place the tank relative to the engine and crankcase, how to set the fork distance, where to set the limits of the seat length relative to the rear axle, and so on.

He uses the Honda CX500 cafe racer you see here as a real-world, guiding example. If you have an interest in building, or plan to build a cafe racer, check out his article.


  

Triumph Hurricane Tribute for the New Millennium from Vicente Design

Vicente Triumph Millennium 900 Hurricane Tribute

Designer Jean Francois Vicente created this beautiful tribute to the Craig Vetter designed Triumph Hurricane X75. He started with a Triumph 900 Adventurer. The composite body work and triple pipes are of his own design. I think it captures the look and spirit well in modern technology. You can read more about it at the Kneeslider blog.

You can read more about Craig Vetter and the Triumph Hurricane at his Craig Vetter Hurricane pages. You will also find links there to a gallery of Hurricane pictures and a listing of Hurricane articles.

1973 Triumph Hurricane X75

Flying Merkel Tribute Build, Part 2

Reproduction of  Historic1913 Flying Merkel

Terry, the builder of this tribute to the legendary Flying Merkel boardtrackers, has sent me a link to his very extensive gallery of pics he took of the build-in-progress, step-by-step. If you want to build a bike of your own, there's a lot you can learn by studying these.

The Flying Merkel pictured to the left is a replica built by builder Chris Cutler. Tip of the hat to The Vintagent blog for this one.

Flying Merkel Tribute Build

Flying Merkel Boardtracker

This guy at BTRbuilder.com started a Flying Merkel tribute build in 2010. He started a thread that logs his design and build efforts here at ADVrider.com forums. That link is to the first entry in the thread. He's posted a lot of pictures at in each entry, documented the project in very good detail. If you're interested in doing any kind of custom bike build yourself, you will find this educational.

There is only a landing page at BTRbuilder.com, but he does have an email address, and says he has boardtracker parts and plans available. The Facebook page, BTRbuilder, is apparently gone... I can't get to it.

Completed Merkel Tribute Bike from BTRbuilder

I have sent a note to the email address given there, info@btrbuilder.com, asking if he still has parts and plans available. I will update here if I get a response, whether or not it's positive or negative. Stay tuned.

Update 8/25: I got a reply from Terry, the designer and builder at BTRbuilder. Here it is:

I do have parts and full scale printed templates of the Merkel I built but I haven't decided if I'm going to put together a full set of plans yet. I'm still trying to see where the interest is and for the most part it seems that people want help on building there own idea of a boardtracker and don't necessarily want to build the same bike I did. I'm currently building a complete bike for a guy that saw the Merkel but wanted something different.  My main goal right now is just putting myself out there to help people with whatever they want to build.  Sometimes it's me building something for them and sometimes it's just me giving advice to help them do it themselves.

You can contact him at the email address given above, info@btrbuilder.com. He has also sent me links to pics of two other projects, and I will upload a couple of pics of them in separate posts.

The 2013 One Motorcycle Show Roundup at The Selvedge Yard Blog

1970 Triumph TT100C, "Lemon Drop"

Just found this nice gallery of pics from The One Motorcycle Show of 2013 at The Selvedge Yard blog.

Video from the 5th Annual The One Motorcycle Show in Portland

The Juliet Zulu creative agency documented the See See Motor Coffee sponsored The One Motorcycle Show in Portland last month. Videos and still shots are now up at their site.

McQueen Inspired Triumph Motorcycle Design Concepts by Designcube

Designcube "Great Escape" Triumph Concept Bike

The design team at Designcube, a Barcelona-based industrial design house, has shared renderings of two Triumph concept bikes inspired by classic Steve McQueen films, the "The Great Escape" and  "The Getaway". Both are based on the 885cc Triumph Speed Triple.

Will either one or both ever be brought to market, whether as a conversion kit or custom bike? They aren't saying. These may well remain just design exercises, though it would be very cool to see at least the Great Escape scrambler pictured here come to life as either a custom or a conversion kit.

You can see more Designcube motorcycle and automotive concepts and projects at their online Coroflot portfolio.

P.S. The stunt riding in "The Great Escape" was performed by the late, legendary SoCal motorcycle racer, Bud Ekins, who was a friend of McQueen's. Ekins also stood-in for McQueen as the stunt driver of the Ford Mustang in the awesome chase scene in "Bullit." Here's the 1966 Triumph desert sled that Ekins built for McQueen.

The One Motorcycle Show & Bad Weather

We were really looking forward to attending the 5th annual The One Motorcycle Show in Portland this year. Had hoped to take a memory-card full of pics to share with you here, but are really disappointed to report that due to the biggest storm we've seen in 25 years here we just could not make it. So, we console ourselves with the video from the event.

We will report more news from the show as the See See Motor Coffee crew releases pics and video.

Roc City Cafe Racers CB750

Roc City CB750 Cafe Racer

Roc City Cafe Racers owner, Sean Pelletier recently built a CB750 cafe racer for himself. Just saw his post and pics at his Roc City shop blog.

If you're in the market for awesome alloy tanks and seats for a cafe racer build, be sure to take a lot at Roc City's handcrafted offerings at their online store.

Update: A hearty welcome to all readers coming here through WeLoveCafeRacers.com. If you go to our search box to the right below and search for "cafe racer" you will find a lot more posts featuring some very cool bikes and their builders.