Bikes of the Month – April

Another month of 2017 behind us, another Bikes of the Month on BikeBrewers.com with some interesting machines. The interesting part is that all five machines here are built around a base bike we don’t see that often. We’ve got four (!) out of the box Honda’s: a Shadow 600, a CG125, an FX650 and an NTV650. And since I didn’t want this month to be a “Honda only”-party, I’ve got a beautiful Buell XB Cafe Racer….

Honda Shadow Special

Grabbing a cruiser like the Honda Shadow and turn it into something sporty isn’t easy, but not impossible. The guys from D-I Motorsport from Kuala Lumpur saw this as a cool challenge and started building a Shadow 600 from the ground up. The result? Well just take a look! [read more]

Buell XB Cafe Racer

Amazing creation by Ask Motorcycles from Japan based on a Buell XB. A mixture of a classic cafe racer and a modern supersport. Owner/builder Rad Yamamoto really pushed his skills in metal fabrication with the alloy body. He tried to create both “slick” and “organic” lines. A design that worked out well on the machine. The machine is named “Kanna”, which means “No God” in Japanese. On the annual Hot Rod & Custom Show in Yokohama, the bike even was the reason to create a new category in the awards section. [read more]

(p.s.: like custom Buell’s? Check out this one, this one, and this one!

Honda CG125 Cafe Racer

We all know the usual suspects for building a cafe racer, with the Honda CB-series and BMW R-series as the most popular platforms. Small displacement bikes are usually skipped, but in my opinion, a small bike can also be a great base for building a custom motorcycle. And if we’re talking about small displacement motorcycles, you roughly have two places on the world that pop-up: Asia or Brasil. On these places small bikes are a common way of cheap transportation. Luckily there are some people out there who are not afraid to turn these practical (and rather ugly) machines into something special, just like Fernando Casado, a product design student from Brasil. He took a 1980 Honda CG125 and turned it into a beautiful looking, classic cafe racer. [read more]

“Fusqvarna”

This may look like a strange name for a bike that’s actually a Honda FX650. But it’s not the frame or the engine that’s in the center of this build, it’s the mythical gas tank of the Husqvarna back in the 70s and 80s. Since that’s the only Husqvarna part of this machine. The builder, Le Garage Félix (which you may know from this KLR650 Scrambler) made their own version of the Husky; Fusqvarna (with the F from Felix). For a second they were thinking about calling it “Fucksvarna”, but they didn’t want to disrespect the heritage of the brand. And the result is this minimalistic Honda FX650 Scrambler…[read more]

Honda NTV650 Cafe Racer

Another cool machine built by our Dutch friend Wido Veldkamp, owner of Wimoto. The project was born to surprise his wife for her birthday and the donor is pretty unusual: a Honda NTV650. “An ugly bike with no potential. At least, that’s wat most people think” says Wido. First he wanted to build a scrambler of it, but after fitting some new parts, he changed his plans and mounted a beautiful half fairing which soon changed the aesthetics of the bike making it more looking like a cafe racer. “The Green Goblin” was starting to take shape… [read more]