....I take you don't particularly like Cafe's? Why?
I certainly don't like cafe bikes for me. They're fun for about two blocks, then the discomfort becomes far too annoying.
Racers are made for the track, not the street. I can appreciate any purpose built machine. But, only when it is being used for it's purpose.
I see most cafe conversion as a death announcement for the machine. Not today, but the near future.
Stock bike configuration you can ride for hours, in most any weather, and still have the bike perform as expected.
Stripped down bikes, and most "cafe racers" have extremely little functional engineering put in to them. They aren't that fast and much of the utility has been stripped off. They become conversation pieces, that can only be ridden under limited circumstances.
Here in Cal, we can go months without any rain. That doesn't stop the sprinklers from soaking the streets. Personally, you will have to pay me to ride a bobbed rear fender through mud puddles. I don't consider it fun to wear road grime on my back or have it run down my neck. And, doesn't it look cool to wear that grimy jacket/shirt into the restaurant, too?
Then too, is the water that gets onto the popular "PODS" to choke off engine performance in adverse weather conditions.
I rescued a "cafe racer" 550. They did the usual, low bars and strip down to save weight. They removed the inner rear plastic fender and used a K&N single open filter in place of the enclosed air box. Such thoughtful engineering allowed any fluids, grime mud, dirt, spit, etc to be picked up by the rear wheel and deposited on the open filter element (rendering it pitiful).
There is no doubt that some cafe conversions have had some skill applied to the mods. That doesn't mean that the engineering has been done to make the bike a reliable and functional racer. More often it becomes a garage showpiece, and conversation subject, rather than a transportation device. Rather a waste of machinery, IMO.
Making a racer that never races, has no class to race within, makes the rider every bit a poser as the lawyers and doctors buying Harleys so they can be once month "bikers", (with chaps and a Do-rag, of course).
I have a deep suspicion that cafe conversions made from dilapidated derelicts, is actually a step up, and does prolong the life and utility of a machine.
Further, the person doing the work usually gains a lot of skill, which I consider a very good thing.
Converting a functional street bike to cafe racer most often spells it's doom. It doesn't take much skill at all to put on a set of clubmans, and discard perfectly functional parts for the sole reason of gaining "style points".
Then mess with the inlet and exhaust, making the bike run poorly, and then giving up the lemon they created by selling the "style" to some one else that knows only style and no engineering. Then the bike turns into a neglected derelict, where the original street bike could still be ridden for some fun.
I already asked in a thread how old some of the cafe conversions have lasted. The responders that they still had them, had also restored them them back into real street machines. Others parked or sold them off to get a different machine better suited for actually riding on the street.
I still have a cafe racer from the 80's. A 77 converted in the 80's and run for a year or two, then parked and neglected for the next 20 years.
Finally, it seems silly to convert a 70's bike into a racer. Without doing extensive engine mods, you aren't going to be faster than most any modern bike made from mid 80's on. And then, it will never ever handle or stop as well as a modern bike anyway. The best you can hope for is a conversation piece.
Then when the conversation peters out, there sits another bike neglected and derelict, in favor of something more "shiny".
In summary, I don't like cafe racers because they aren't much use to me, and I equate it to a proclamation about a machine's imminent demise.
Sometimes a curmudgeon's viewpoint just "fits".
Some of you "cafe" junkies" may notice that I still try and help those "machine destroyers". This is mostly because I dream that the machine is being given up for "knowledge" sake on the part of the owner. I generally give up when they are no longer interested in learning but "just want to ride".
I just can't support the "young and stupid" (or old and stupid) as being the ideal life form.
Aren't you glad you asked, Bel?
