Hunkered in a workshop in the industrial estate behind London’s legendary Ace Cafe, Cafe Racer Customs in many ways hark back to the cafe racer tradition of Paul Dunstall, the Rickman brothers and Colin Seely, who would build custom performance bikes to the highest standards of engineering and design prowess in the 60s and 70s.
Not that there’s anything old fashioned or retro about Cafe Racer Customs. Their ethos and practice is very much routed in the 21st Century, but carries the torch for the uncompromising engineering benchmarks of their cafe racer forefathers.
A team of two, Will and Simon do almost everything in-house, including engine building and modification, fabrication and machining, tube manipulation, vapour blasting, and of course design. Their skillsets combine to cover all of stages manufacturing and production. Their uncompromising attention to detail is beyond obsessive, and it is no more evident than in their CRC6 CBX1000.
The most extraordinary air-cooled motorcycle engine ever produced finally finds the home it deserves in CRC’s astonishing, hand built tribute to the Great British Cafe Racer. The engine was stripped, vapour blasted, rebuilt and housed in a powder-coated custom T45 tube and bronze welded frame. A bespoke matching swingarm was added with Ohlins shocks. The Ohlins forks and custom billet brackets brace the Brembo calipers and twin 320mm floating discs.
The yokes, instrument mounts and rear sets were all customed out of billet, and the tank, seat unit and front mudguard were alloy constructed in-house. The six Keihin flat-slide carbs had a full dyno set up. The exhaust system is a bespoke Racefit titanium 6 into 2. A custom loom powers a Dyna ignition and coils. The creamy paint finish is by Khameleon Customs and the upholstery courtesy of the mercurial Stan Leathers.
The spec list runs to several pages, but what is immediately clear is that this bike is as every bit beautiful as is it engineered. In the metal, it’s simply breathtaking. The result of hundreds of hours of dedicated craftsmanship, the CRC6 is a perfectly balanced hybrid of the contemporary and the classic, that stays true to the spirt of the legendary A40 cafe racer.
Will and Simon are currently splitting their time between customer commissions and projects of their own, including the equally outstanding soon to be featured Suzuki GSX1100 powered Magnum. See more from Cafe Racer Customs on their website and here on The Bike Shed.
