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.