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.

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.…

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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…

Building a Cafe Racer – Blacktrack BT02 design

It’s fair to say that a hell of a lot of work goes into the custom motorcycles I feature. So much in fact that it can’t all be covered in a single story. From sourcing the donor bike to designing and fabricating individual parts and right through to the final test ride,…

Workshop Series – Choosing Motorcycle Suspension

The rise of the cafe racer scene has brought with it the desire to improve the performance of older motorcycles. One sure-fire way of improving how your motorcycle handles is upgrading its suspension. In this special edition of our ‘Workshop Series’ Australian suspension experts, Ikon Suspension, share some valuable advice on what…

Workshop Series – Motogadget Motoscope Mini

In this edition of our ‘Workshop Series’, we’ve teamed up with the crew at Revival Cycles to bring you this in-depth overview of MotoGadget’s Motoscope Mini. This tiny digital gauge is the ultimate addition to any custom build. Its minuscule design is perfect for keeping the front end of your motorcycle clean…

Workshop Series – Fork conversion with Cognito Moto

Swapping your old forks with a set of modern, better-performing upside-down forks sounds like a complex task, and it is. Thankfully there are some great aftermarket products available to simplify the job. In this edition of our Workshop Series, the crew at Cognito Moto walk us through the process of installing a…

Top 10 Cafe Racers of 2017

2017 was a great year. The custom motorcycle scene has continued to produce some truly incredible builds and we were honored to feature many of them here on Return of the Cafe Racers. So this year we’ve pulled together a list of our favorites from 2017. Top 10 lists have never really…

Cafe Contenders – Yamaha SR400 and SR500

At some stage, the tide turned against Yamaha’s SR400 and SR500. It might just be that I’m in Australia and we’ve been saturated with years of Deus-built specials. But there’s been a rising level of snark towards cafe racers built around Yamaha’s evergreen classic. It seems that these days it takes a…

Café Contenders – 2001 to 2016 Triumph Bonneville range

For years the de facto choice when building a cafe racer was the air-cooled, 865cc Triumph Bonneville. With very few changes it dominated the retro market for a generation – from its Hinkley manufactured beginnings in 2001 to its final EFI form rolled out of Thailand fifteen years later. And that’s because…