Comments on: Cafe Racer the Motorcycle – Book Review

By: Skizick

Skizick — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:36:55 +0000

I only wish the Cafe’ers would realize what a poor venue public highways are. As EMT’s we constantly scoop up wantabee Rossi’s that didn’t plan on that Winabago stopped to take a picture of a squirrel. No one is there to wave the red flag befor the hazzard is upon them. There’s old ones and bold ones, but no old bold ones goes the addage.

By: coho

coho — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:27:10 +0000

I’ve been leaning toward a cafe style for the TW200 I’m currently shopping for, can’t wait for the REDZ TW catalog.

I’ve been looking at a lot of cafe bikes lately (research, you know) and it seems to me that they were very much the streetfighters of the day (lighter/faster/lighter/faster), but since fully faired from the factory wasn’t an option back in the day, it was unnecessary to first crash off the plastic. Handy.

By: dennon

dennon — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 03:17:11 +0000

I hate to break it to you Clive but even Royal Enfields are fuel injected now.

This shouldn’t stop us though, a small displacement bike that is light and good handling is way more fun on real roads than the supersport bikes in my opinion. You are also less likely to hit a tree at a ridiculous speed or lose your license as well.

By: Clive Makinson-Sanders

Clive Makinson-Sanders — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 02:15:00 +0000

Qrazy, my brother has a 75 cb360t thats begging me to tear it apart. He doesnt ride or tinker with it, but he refuses to sell it to me. What a waste.

By: QrazyQat

QrazyQat — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 02:05:17 +0000

now if the neighbor will sell me that RD350…DO THE TON!

You know, a CB350 Honda also makes a nice cafe racer. Back when they had — for a very brief period — a small superbike class in the AMA I rode a friend’s CB350 at Daytona. We didn’t do much, just installed low bars and some Ferodo linings and drilled big vent holes in the front drum, but you could do some other nice things to make it look neater (I think some mufflers combined with the CL upswept headers would look great and would help with cornering clearance).

Anyway, I could get that very nearly up to 100mph on the banking. And during practice all the superbikes practiced together. Yvon DuHamel on the Z1 passed me a couple times between turns 2 and 3… ever so slightly faster than me. And Reg Pridmore passed me on the banking several times very close, which I took as a compliment (you don’t do that with a slower bike if you don’t trust the rider); 40 mph faster at that point about a foot away.

If we hadn’t partially melted a piston I think I could’ve made top ten, and we were really stock while the RD’s were rather heavily sliced and diced, portwise.