Building a Café Racer

Are you thinking of building a Café Racer? You're in the right place! Whether you're bolting a few parts onto your motorcycle or transforming it into a bonafide 1950s styled café racer, the stories you'll find here will help you get it done. You'll find everything from how to guides to aftermarket parts features, and even some motorcycle reviews designed to help you choose the right donor for your café racer project.

Locate a builder – Custom Workshop Map

Over the years I’ve featured thousands of custom motorcycles built by talented folks from all over the world. Some have been built by dedicated enthusiasts at home, but most were built by professional workshops. The reason for this is obvious. Not everyone has the skill or the time it takes to build…

Kawasaki Z900RS Cafe by Rizoma

While most aspects of motorcycle design have come a long way since the 70s, there and several that haven’t. Take for instance indicators. On many modern bikes, we are still seeing oversized blinkers jutting out like babies arms with clenched fists. Then there’s the run of the mill big round plastic mirrors,…

Learn to Build your own Cafe Racer

There are plenty of arguments for why you should build your own cafe racer rather than having it built by a professional workshop. The biggest reason is, of course, the cost. Unfortunately, there are also plenty of reasons why people don’t do it themselves. Lacking the skill to do it is perhaps the…

Workshop series – DIY motorcycle stand

Anyone who works on motorcycles knows the importance of a good stand. Raising your motorcycle up off the floor gives you easy access to hard to reach places along with making the whole process much easier on your body. Small lifts and race stands do a great job, but if you’re looking…

Top 10 Cafe Racers of 2018 – Editor’s Choice

That’s a wrap for another year of cafe racer coverage from around the globe. This year was Return of the Cafe Racers twelfth birthday and we celebrated it with a new look website, a renewed focus on workshop and DIY stories and, as always, a plethora of top-notch cafe racer builds. As I…

Building a Cafe Racer

5 motorcycle wiring mistakes (and how to avoid them)

Tom John, the man behind Purpose Built Moto, has 13 years of electrical contracting work up his sleeves. This is evidenced by the bulletproof electrical systems he installs on his own custom bike builds. As part of my ongoing ‘Building a Cafe Racer’ series, I invited Tom to contribute a story about the…

Workshop Series – Cafe Racer Kits

Our workshop series continues this week with an interview from ‘Cafe Racer Kits’ in the United Kingdom. Ian Saxcoburg is a mechanical draughtsman who ran his own engineering businesses prior to starting the Cafe Racer Kits business. Along with his wife Tracey, they produce a range of cafe styled “kit bikes”. The…

Workshop Series – Cafe Racer Rear Set Install

A couple of weeks ago I spent a few days with Matt at his Krank Engineering workshop. Matt had agreed to help me fit a set of “universal” Tarozzi rearset footpegs. This was a stage of my cafe racer build that I’ve been meaning to do for years so it was a…

Building a Café Racer – Blacktrack BT02 Shakedown

In this third and final instalment on Blacktrack Motors BT02 Triumph ‘Thruxman’, we learn about the final build stage. Sacha Lakic explains the rebuild process and the all-important safety shakedown. Sacha also shares some insights into the direction he is heading with his Blacktrack brand and what we can expect to see from…

Workshop Series – Cafe Racer Fairing Install

When I set out to build my first cafe racer 12 years ago I had always planned for it to be naked. In my eyes, this was the traditional cafe setup and my goal was to create a bike that would look right at home outside the Ace Cafe in the 1950s.…

Building A Cafe Racer – Blacktrack BT02 Build

In part 2 of our ‘Building a Cafe Racer’ series with Blacktrack motorcycles, we discuss the build of their Norton Manx inspired BT02 Thruxman. With a design concept set in stone Sacha Lakic and his team begin translating the design into functional components to fit to their Triumph Thruxton R donor bike. Here…