Finding the Donor Bike

Finding a good donor bike is a big task. There are many things to consider when choosing one such as:

• How big of an engine do I want?
• What style do I want
• V-twin, Parallel twin, Inline4, SOHC, DOHC?
• Mono rear shocks, or dual rear shocks
• Shaft or chain driven
• Parts availability
• Reliability

To answer the first question we wanted at least a  500-900cc.
The rear shocks weren't too important because the virago mono shock looks nice and CB style dual shocks look clean as well. We narrowed down our choices to these four bikes.

1970s Honda CB750

These are great bikes for café builds and have a huge following especially for the SOHC ones that were produced up until 1978. CBs are easier builds than most because they have great parts availability and Honda built lots of them. To see more on these go here: http://www.cb750cafe.com/ Carpy is a legend when it comes to building CB café racers. We didn't pick this because we wanted a less commonplace café racer.

1980s Yamaha Virago XVS750

This is a  less commonplace bike in the café racer arena mainly because it fits more of a bobber concept. It comes from the factory with a mono shock in the rear and gives the tail end of this bike a real clean look. The v-twin however is more of a cruiser look than we really wanted. Here is a pic of a finished café virago:

Here is another legendary café racer builder who built this one: http://docschops.net/

1976-1981 Suzuki GS750 and GS750G

This bike is a fine choice because it comes with a powerful inline 4 and in later years came with the choice of shaft drive instead of chain. These bikes are great donors because of their strong motors and general easy layout for a simple café racer conversion. There is also a bolt together café kit made exclusively for the s40 if you want an easy café racer to put together. You can find that here: http://www.rycamotors.com/ If you don't like DOHCs inline 4 engines then you will want to steer clear of Suzuki 750s. Here is a pic of a Café racer Suzuki 750:

We were looking at these, but there was not a lot up for sale in my area and in the end chose...............

1976-1983 Kawasaki KZ750

These bikes weren't the fastest or even really that popular back in the day. They were built for dependability and ease of maintenance. They were one of the only bikes in Kawasaki's lineup that didn't have a 4cylinder setup. For this bike Kawasaki went with a parallel twin. It made the bike kind of wide in the middle but still looked better than the regular v-twins. In fact the Triumph Bonnevilles were probably the only other bikes out there at the time that used this set up. We liked this bike because there aren't a lot of café builds built on this one and we liked the fact that it had 3 disc brakes and cast wheels rather then spoke. The stance on these bikes are also phenomenal and easy to even out without cutting the front forks. These bikes were actually pretty plentiful in our area too so the prices weren't outrageous like the CBs and Suzuki's. Parts availability can be a problem for these bikes and more fabrication is probably required for this bike as compared to a CB. We are up to the challenge and hope we can make it into a finished product kind of like this one:

Lets see how it turns out!