Workingman's CB750 seat fitment and frame modications

Here's what the stock tail section on the CB750 looks like - grab rail, tool box and a brake light that can also be used to send semaphore signals between fleets.

The owner was after a seat that was a little funkier than stock, but still comfortable as the bike was his everyday rider. We sourced a shorter unit that looks pretty good, but the frame has to be modified fairly extensively for it to fit.

That's us getting enthusiastic with a red marker - that's all the bits that have to go. Here's the rear loop bend and welded in place, ready for paint.

Now at this stage we'd ordinarily like to take everything out and 2 Pac or powdercoat the frame but as the customer wanted a bike that he would ride every day and 'never, ever clean' it was hardly worthwhile. But here's the seat in place...

Perfect. We also added a neat little brake light and some indicators but, er, we forgot to take pictures. Sorry about that. When you're on a roll, you know?

While we were there we also cut and folded that aluminium sidecover. As with the tank there's no polishing there - just the fold and cut marks cleaned up.

The black CB750 all finished.

Here's the completed black CB750...

And some more detailed shots. The rearsets are a generic type and a backing plate had to be made from a 8mm plate of alloy, cut down to fit. The one plate also mounts the rear brake and exhaust to keep things simple and looking light.

A bank of the CR carbs. With the 865 kit on board, heavy clutch kit and with a proper exhaust the bike should run a lot better now than it did before.

That's a Joker Machine CNC'd top triple clamp. Bolted up nicely. I think a cast type might work a little better but to be fair it is an 80s CB750 so it makes sense. The speedo his a generic Posh unit or something like that and the bracket was made by us. It was drilled and finished for a row of idiot lights but after pairing down all the electrics it turns out that the bike can run without them.

Small headlight. The instruments, which are only just visible here have been chromed. It has a twin disc front set up and runs two brake lines the whole way rather than using a splitter box. The brake lines at the front and rear are stainless Goodridges.

The new exhaust system we fitted was okay, with the exception of the muffler. So we cut off around 8 or 9 inches and looked around the workshop for something that would suit. We scavenged this off our Bimota. 

And there you have it - a nice clean and simple CB750 cafe racer.

Black CB750 - Making the seat and surrounds.

Here's a 1982 CB750 that we worked on a while back.

So first up, a little information about the seat, which was purchased from 'Benjie's Cafe Racer' in the US. It was apparently a straight bolt-on job but when it arrived it was twisted and bent out of shape and appeared to be fibreglass mixed with talc. We ended up spending 10-12 hours just trying to make the thing fit. Constant cutting and reshaping until we managed to make it work. In retrospect we probably should have cut our losses and just made a mold of the seat and started from scratch. It would have been quicker.

So after some altering of the seat the frame was cut and a new loop added. When this was done the seat matched up neatly...

There was more work to be done underneath the seat. The battery goes in the rear hump...

In that last photo you can see the beginnings of the work that we did under the seat. Brackets were made and stainless steel mesh was fitted to allow cool air to flow around the electronics. Other stainless plates were fitted and polished.

 And a plate was fitted in lieu of a fender. Small tabs welded up for this. Dry fitting it here to make sure all the screws were lined up correctly.

We did some more work which we'll outline in another blog post shortly. But in the meantime here's how the seat and rear frame looks at the moment. We think it looks pretty neat - especially given the quality of the item we had to work with in the first place! We painted the tank and seat in 2 pack gloss black.

Have you thrown some money on a part that needs some massaging to fit? Contact us for a chat to see if we can, cut, shut or weld to make it work.

Fitting a Fairing

As we all know the SR wasn't designed to have a fairing. Sure, there's plenty of options for bikini fairings and even a few half fairings but a full fairing - well, that's a different task altogether. So here's some pictures of the process of dressing up a naked bike.

First up is selecting the fairing and dry fitting it with some clamps to check the stance, width and what areas need to be relieved and cut back.

Indicators are a bit of a tight fit... More on that soon.

Looking pretty good. Once that's been sorted you kinda work backwards to fabricate up the brackets needed to hold everything securely - and to make it easily removable for servicing. First up, the headlight mount:

The lower brackets...

And while we're there we moved the ignition unit to a more subtle location...

And now with the headlight fitted. Things are starting to come together. Tank on there and the ubiquitous nitroheads seat fitted too.

View from the cockpit. Pretty bare.

And here you'll see some flush-mounted indicators. Keeps the lines clean.

And while we're here, here's the idiot lights for the SR. The headlight was drilled and small LED's fitted at intervals across the top. It keeps everything under the fairing simple, light and nice and stripped back. No tacho, but really, if you don't know when to shift on a single cylinder bike you've probably got bigger issues to deal with. The speedo is a Daytona unit.

And we're nearly there. there's electronics to fit and a few other things but it's basically all there. Want a fairing fitted to your SR400 or SR500? Why not contact us?

DR650 Tracker

Here's a straightforward one we've had a play with recently.

It's a 2005 DR650 that was built by Deus in Sydney when they first started 6 or so years ago.

When the customer bought the bike it'd been dropped on both sides, and has the marks to show it. Here's some pics of the bike before we got a hold of it, complete with bombastic metal flake.

The customer wanted something a little more traditional looking than the standard headlight surround. He tracked down an XJR1300 headlight and we mounted it and sorted the electrics.

Finished in the workshop...

A few days later and it's up and doing the rounds of Bright and Omeo.

While he was away riding he had a bit of an 'incident' with the tail light. (It wasn't made by us!) It was flimsy and starting to crack from the vibrations generated by a big single, breaking and falling on the rear tyre, shattering the light.

So, we changed the tailight out to something brighter and mounted some smaller indicators further under the rear fibreglass. Some more pics (Again, from the customer)

When it's not lit up, the tail section is hidden under the fibreglass, lightening the look of the bike a fair bit. While we were in there, we found the cause of some of the fibreglass cracking on the right hand side of the ducktail. The exhaust mount bracket was pushing against it, causing some of the 'spiderwebbing' in the finish on the other side. We trimmed the mount so it won't cause any further problems.

Pretty subtle eh? But when it's lit up...

It's a lot brighter than before. Overall a much safer and sturdier package now. Some welding was required and the thing is so solid now you could literally drill down through the tail, mount a ball and tow a trailer.

So it looks like that's the first stage done there.

But while we had the bike, we couldn't help ourselves and have a play with some spare tanks and seats we had around the workshop. We tried a dozen tanks, but none worked as well as an old Ducati parahell twin tank.

Ah, now we're talking...

Watch this space.