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.

The SR400 #8's Front Brakes

First of all we need to get through a backlog of information on what we've been up to, before we can get around to telling you what we've been doing in the last few months. So we're going to rewind to the #8 SR400. There's a few cool things about this bike but here's a bit of information about the front brake.

The spoked-wheel SR400 had two versions of front brakes - the disc, which is most commonly seen, and the drum, which has a bit of a bad reputation which is undeserved in our opinion. When set up properly the drum can be just as good as the disc. But anyway, here's what it looks like standard.

They look like holes, but they're actually black plastic caps over alloy. Cheeky Yamaha. And the other side is the same...

On the left hand side of the front of the drum you can spot what looks to be an air intake. It actually isn't - there's no holes machined in there at all, just fins.

So with the #8 SR400 we took the right hand side of the drum brake cover and decided to open the holes up. They were bored through at an angle and then die-ground, dressed and finished. Eventually they looked like this.

Looks good when it's running as well. Gives the bike a little bit of colour.

And here's a brief video of it in action:

The other side was opened up and an intake fabricated.

All in all it looks a lot better than the original Yamaha SR400 front brakes - and it'll be more effective too.