The Iceberg – Civil Custom Honda CB750

“My bike is a 1976 Honda CB750K6. I have been working on it on and off for about a year or so. I built this bike how I pictured it should be done. I didn’t want to shell out a ton of money on the build, but also wanted it to be nice and feature the parts I wanted, so lots of careful decisions were made.”

“I pretty much built the whole thing myself using my own ideas and skills. My brother helped me with the fabrication and welding work and my Dad with bodywork on the tank and seat cowl. The seat was also upholstered by a friend, but other than that everything was done by us. Nothing was sent out to get done. Youtube, Google and forums were a huge help when trying to figure things out.”

“There is 12 months of work in this bike. Lots of frame mods, a complete custom wiring harness and loads of other parts. The custom fibreglass seat cowl was designed and built by me, but I think my favorite feature is the oil tank. I used the connections and parts from the original tank and my brother and I built the new one to fit behind the carbs in the triangle of the bike’s frame.”

Along withthe parts Pavel fabricated himself his selection of upgraded parts included a Motogadget M-Unit and M-Blaze bar end indicators, which he wired into his new harness. He fit new shocks to the rear of the bike, rebuilt the front end and swapped out the 40 year old gauges with aftermarket version. To keep the tail end clean a dual function LED strip runs along the rear frame hoop and the number plate is mounted vertically by the rear wheel. To get the CB running right the top end was rebuilt prior to the powdercoating. The stock carbs were also given an overhaul and tuned to work with the velocity stacks and blacked out Mac 4-into-1 exhaust system.

“My whole design concept was to make it simple, clean and elegant. I call this bike ‘Iceberg’, partly because of the white paint scheme, but also because like an iceberg the bulk of the work that went into it is under the surface.”

CIVIL CUSTOMS

Photography by Alex Shtunyuk

“When I was around 21 I bought my first motorcycle, a 2012 Honda Shadow Phantom, but when I was about 22 I saw a cafe racer and instantly fell in love with the style and idea.” recalls the now 24 years old Pavel Onishenko. “I work at an auto body shop and that’s where I built my motorcycle. I grew up watching my Dad work on cars and I had the opportunity to tinker with stuff growing up which gave me experience using tools and a basic knowledge of mechanics.”