Cafe Racer ideas

Hi everyone. I'm gonna bite the bullet and make a cafe racer of my MkII 850. I don't want to butcher it and I would like that I can return it to standard if required. Gonna do rearsets, new switchgear and clip-ons. I have already done the ignition, Corbin and have a 34mm Mikuni on order. Can anyone point me to a good site to get pics and if anyone has Commando cafe pics, could they post them here. I wanna get this right and any help will be greatly appreciated.

Hi, I'm planning the same thing. Posted my ideas/questions a week ago and decided to go with the Norvil fairing, clip-ons and rearsets but keeping the stock roadster seat & tank. This should work with clip-ons except you sit further back and it might be tight for a passenger. What I did was print a good side view of my bike and copy/print/cutout fairings etc from mags and scale up/down. I stuck these on the picture just to see what the effect would be. It looks OK, but would be better with a longer tank and short single seat (Norvil etc). Have a look at the Colorado Norton site gallery, www.coloradonortonworks.com/about/gallery. They use Corbin seats a lot but no fairings or clip-ons. Are you an NOC member? if so did you see the cover of this months Roadholder? Fastback seat, Norvil fairing, Interstate tank, clip-ons and rearsets. Looks really nice. The owner may be on this forum for all I know. Post some pics when it's done and we can compare who came out best! Cheers.

If your talking about the Black one I know the man. There are many hours poured into that bike. He's a tool and die tradesman that's good because there a number of hand made parts down this road.

There is a picture of my cafe racer on P7 of this forum under the title 'Tall tales....what ever made me buy a Norton' it is on page 5 of that thread and there is another lovely racing commando on the same page, I'm sorry not to attach it here but I am a bit of a 'gumby' when it comes to computers.
The tank came from 'The Tank Shop' in Scotland, the seat was a modified wide-line model from Dresda. All the plating is nickel for that instant patina and the engine has S4 camshaft, Carrillo rods, balanced crank, gas flowed head, 32mm carbs and micro digital ignition. It goes like a scalded cat once it reaches 5000RPM and everyone comments on it's looks, however now that I am a little older after 15 minutes riding the bike my back is done-in and I have to hail a taxi!
Seriously if you want to do any sort of mileage on your bike you should consider the ergonomics carefully, I will happily take mine out for an hour or two with my mates but for longer rides I would always take my roadster with standard bars and seat.

Cafe stuff

Thanks for the responses. I realise the ergos are going to be affected, but just can't resist the style of a cafe racer. Not so sure about the Corbin, but clip-ons are a must. Can I still handle a pillion with rearsets?

Snagger, I have pillion pegs on mine and plans to build another longer seat for those occasions when I wish to be two-up. I used to ride two-up on a Dunstall Commando with no problems but that did have a longer seat.

Cafe

Thanks Dave. I like your bike, very neat. What are your thoughts on how to lose the clamp on the top yoke without it looking like it was ground? I can always get another yolk, but don't quite know how to hide the axe attack.

Snagger, Thanks for the kind words, I left the bracket on the yoke on my bike as I had innitially planned to mount the choke lever there, I subsequently found a choke lever for a Triumph with 1" bars and so I mounted it on the frame downtube near the oil tank where it has a better routing and is kept out of the way. I have a short piece of handle-bar with alloy end plugs bolted on the bar clamps at the moment as I think this looks better than empty clamps, I may fit an oil pressure guage in this position at some time in the future.
I'm sure you could simply saw/file/grind the handle bar clamps off and make it look just as good as an aftermarket top yoke after it is repainted. As you mentioned yokes seem to be available 2nd hand fairly cheaply and easily so it might be an idea to buy one that you can experiment with and retain the original one in case your styling options and desires change or in case you want to reverse the mods at some time in future. One thing I did find with clip-ons is that the lever/switch options are more limited and on mine I had to fabricate a new pair of control lever clamps as the ones that came with the Tommaselli replica levers were much too wide to accomodate the positioning and the light switch that was my prefered option. If it's relevant I suspect a standard master cylinder for a disc brake setup could be a challenge.

Ludwig, quite nice I must say.. the lack of Z plates really cleans things up.

It appears you have many home made fixs and I would LOVE to see more detailed pictures of your work.. Many chance of finding them somewhere out there on the net?

Regards Chris

Re: Cafe

Snagger said:

Thanks Dave. I like your bike, very neat. What are your thoughts on how to lose the clamp on the top yoke without it looking like it was ground? I can always get another yolk, but don't quite know how to hide the axe attack.

Click to expand...

Clubman sells yokes with no bar clamps and they seem rather cheap. www.clubmanracing.com

wow ludwig. swwet bike. i like the clean look! this is the direction i am looking to go with my project. http://www.ianmaclean.com/blog.html

2 things i would love to know & see more detail of: head light, looks like a ducati monster? large and flat.
removal of the Z plates... i never would have guessed how much better the bike looks. i may need to do this anyway, or build my own to use the rearsets i have.

i must see more!
feel free to email them if you want
-ian

norton@ianmaclean.com

fully adjustable Tommaselli clip ons....

gents....I just bought a pair of these bars for my I-state. gonna fit them tonight....will post a picture of them in the next day or so.
Eric

Re: fully adjustable Tommaselli clip ons....

opps, forks not ready, still at the shop, so no pics. sorry.
Eric

SpitfireRick said:

gents....I just bought a pair of these bars for my I-state. gonna fit them tonight....will post a picture of them in the next day or so.
Eric

Click to expand...

ian, nice project yourself.. see you don't take the easy way.. may I ask who's tank that is? it must be larger than the 3gal manx tank no?

ps, besides torturing Nortons, I make all my own personnal cabinets..

regards Chris

ludwig said:

I would like to put a link to it on the forum but I am too stupid for it .

Click to expand...

To insert photo link/s here, click on the Photobucket *Url* address below a photo.

Then =right click and select *Copy* from the list,

Then to insert the photo link into your message = left click where you want to drop it, right click, then click *Paste*.

To show the photos here do the same but use the *Img* address instead.

Use the *Preview* to check before posting.

If you wish to show the link to your *album* then you need to ensure the album account info is set to *Public*

Ludwig,

I'm not quite sure why that didn't work (maybe you didn't leave a space after the text?) but anyway this might be it:
http://s134.photobucket.com/albums/q88/ludwig_photo/

Thank you ludwig for sharing those photos, there are some interesting modifications shown.

Incredible Mods ! Just incredible............

If one is into modifying bikes, you NEED to take a spin thru Jan's pictures!

Jan, you should post up a list, the pictures deserve captions..

'in awe' Chris