28 January 2015 - Update from planet Zastron (Cape Town Cafe Racer)

We got the races out of the steering neck! Well, Oscar did. The welding trick didn't work quite as smoothly as we'd heard, but it loosened them up enough for us to knock them out.

We had a lekker full day to work on the bike on Saturday. We continued with the reassembly of the front end...

• Triple tree on
• Forks on
• Booties added
• Clip-ons attached
• Wing mirrors attached
• Mudguard modified and attached
• Wheel and caliper on
• Headlamp on

This is what it looked like:

Dad popped in for a drink.
At 6'4" he's a bit tall for this bike

It's fokken exciting to see it taking shape!

On Sunday we degreased the engine in preparation for the vapour blasting. Besides the frame it's all we're blasting, everything else (outer tube forks, caliper, brake drum) is being hand sanded and polished! Ain't nobody got time for anodising.

We also started stripping the tank. Turns out if you don't have the right (industrial) paint stripper this can be quite a bitch. Try not to get paint stripper on your skin, it's not lekker.

Got the two seat/tail moulds back on Monday (we liked the look of two so we wanted to see what they both looked like with the tank) and there was a clear winner. This tail, which is based on an old Aprilia tail (will get more facts on this later), was a much better fit with our tank than the conventional cafe racer round/bubble tail.

Getting the lines right is going to require a bit more work to the frame than we hoped, but it'll be well worth it in the end. Obviously the sub-frame will need to be chopped, but we'll also probably need to adjust the angle of the seat mount, and lift the back of the tank slightly. Oh, and we're probably going to be altering the shape of the tank slightly to get rid of that sharp angle (v) on the side.

I visited a great shop called Retro Prestige Motorcycles in Paarden Eiland during lunch on Monday. It's a workshop/parts shop/coffee shop owned by a friendly chap called David whose R100 Cafe Racer is proudly displayed at the entrance to the shop (rightly so). We've bought quite a few cool parts from these guys. I also saw this bike parked in my street that evening! First R65 conversion I've seen in real life. It's pretty, but it's not going to have anything on our beauty!

I'm in beautiful Zastron (Free State), visiting a client at the moment, and am having serious withdrawal symptoms. I can only hope Oscar's fighting the urge to run ahead without me...

Here's a pic of the vintage tyres we bought. This bike is going to be epic.

Wheels painted black and new vintage tyres mounted

Please drop us a line if you have any questions, comments, advice, or just to say howzit!

Cape Town Cafe Racer Conversion. 

23 January 2015 - Two weeks' worth of blog (Cape Town Cafe Racer)

I've let too much time pass between updates and now I don't know where the hell to begin...

Let's start with a list - you can't go wrong with a list.

Things that are complete:

• Main frame, wheel rims and various other parts have been bead blasted and painted black - it looks rad;
• The carburetors have been serviced and made pretty. Oscar came up with a cool idea to switch the carburetors so that the choke and throttle levers are facing outwards. We're not sure if this is going to work yet, but it looks cool as hell;
• Oscar has replaced the standard choke with a miniature lever attached directly to keep the ugly choke switch off the handlebars. This was a helluva mission. 
• Replaced air filter box with cone filters. 
• The handlebar clamps on the yoke have been grinded off as we'll be using clip-ons, and both the upper and lower triple tree plates have been polished to perfection. Oscar created an anti-vibration mount for the Acewell digital speedo.  

We decided to keep a lot of the parts as untreated aluminium, which means the last two weeks have consisted mainly of sanding and polishing parts to smooth the rough surface created by the sand casting. It's painstaking stuff... starting with 150 grit, working through, 320, 600 to 1000 and then finally using a polishing wheel. 

We've had lots of trouble with bearings this week... We're still struggling to get the bearing race out of the steering head. We've tried a number of not very graceful methods with no luck. Apparently the best way to do this is to weld around the inside of the race, and when it cools down and contracts it pops out on its own... So Oscar's gone to hire a welding machine today to try this out. 

On the other hand something cool that we achieved with a bearing this week was the fitting of the new bearing on the steering stem. We put the bottom plate in the freezer for an hour or two, then stuck the bearing in the oven for half an hour and the thing just slid right on (you could barely even fit it over the top before).

We've had two different seats moulded which we'll hopefully be trying out this weekend. Once we've chosen a seat we can chop the subframe to fit. Lot's of other bits and bobs being grinded, sanded, polished, machined, cleaned, stripped etc. in the background.

We've just started with the rebuild, but very superficially - we just attached the two stands to the frame :) After all the frustration with the bearings we needed a small win!

I've been a bit of a kak partner due to having a ridiculous workload recently. While I failed in my one job to sand and polish the lower brace (triple tree), Oscar's used his ADD powers to just about sand and polish every part to sparkly perfection.

As a side note, Oscar's got cuts and bruises all over and I think he's developing an oil stain tan. He called me a pussy after I insisted on wearing (motorcross) goggles the first time I grinded something because he'd removed the safety guard... in my defense they only stayed on for 5 minutes.

We still haven't touched the engine yet...

Selfie with Oscar polishing

Trying to get race out of steering neck

Please drop us a line if you have any questions, comments, advice, or just to say howzit!

Cape Town Cafe Racer Conversion. 

8 January 2015 - The Strip Begins... and ends! (Cape Town Cafe Racer)

The holidays are over! After a couple of beautiful summery rides through Cape Town we finally started the strip on Tuesday this week, and finished it last night (save for the swing arm which we didn't have the right tool for - apparently a 27mm thin-wall socket). The ride was great, besides the brakes which were pretty terrible. Hopefully they'll be cool after a service, otherwise we'll consider adding a second disk.

(Almost there)

(Voila!)

We were quite surprised at how smooth the strip went. We managed to get pretty much the whole thing done in just two evening sessions.

Next we'll be taking an angle grinder to the frame/sub-frame to shorten the the seat and remove all of the fittings we don't want/need before sending it off for bead blasting.

As far as the engine goes we've just removed and are servicing the carbs for now, and are considering our options with respect to the bead blasting. We'll probably take it in to be serviced rather than do it ourselves - it's just a matter of whether we're going to do this before or after the bead blasting.

(One down, one to go)

There's a lot of stuff going on in the background - Oscar's been missioning around meeting suppliers and fellow enthusiasts, he's bought quite a few minor parts (clutch and break levers, indicators, etc) and ordered some of the more unique/specific parts, the exhaust is in for modification - things are happening! While I sit on my ass at work daydreaming.

I'm off to a wedding for the weekend, so no more physical work for now. There will be lots more constructive daydreaming going on in the meantime though!

Here are two cool links we came across this week:

http://thebikeshed.cc/2013/12/13/eriks-alaskan-r90/
Erik's R90 cafe conversion is definitely one of the most beautiful cafe racers we've come across so far and it's given us lots to think about.

http://www.bikeexif.com/build-cafe-racer
This article by car designer Charlie Trelogan is all about his interpretation of a classic cafe racer design and he explains it really well with great diagrams (and a beautiful example bike).

Cheers.

Please drop us a line if you have any questions, comments, advice, or just to say howzit!
Cape Town Cafe Racer Conversion.