SUSPENSION, BRAKES & WHEELS 

The Daytona 675R front end is one of my personal favourites, and they’ve worked a charm on this bike for sure. We swapped across the front end, pressing the original CBR stem into the front end and swapping out the head bearings. This allowed us to retain the OEM front wheel, Nissin brake calipers & Brembo rotors from the 675R for the build. When the components are this big of an upgrade over stock, we always recommend swapping the entire front end across over to save on problem solving down the track. 

One of the rather novel quirks of the build is the Daytona front end and the CBR600RR shock are both from 2013 bikes, making this a twenty year upgrade on brakes and suspension over the 1993 doner bike. The difference is considerable, with a much firmer valving and full adjustability front and rear. The CBR600RR shock went in a treat, lowering the rear profile slightly flatter with the piggy back reservoir slotting into the space previously occupied by a huge radiator overflow. We downsized the reservoir and relocated it inside the front fairing, leaving the rear of the bike much more stripped back to basics visually. The centre stand and lead acid battery were removed or replaced to shave an easy 6kg, with aluminium replacing steel on the chain guard, side covers and tail tidy to shave a little more where we could. We also updated the gearing to be more street focused, with the standard 16/46 sprockets getting a punchy update to 14/45. 

BODYWORK / FABRICATION 

We chopped the square shaped subframe out of the lower frame supports and started building the upper subframe in a shorter, cleanly hooped style. From there, we began shaping up a much more curvaceous lower subframe with a pipe bender in a way that opened up the space visually. Once we’d welded our best and grinded the rest, we made up mounts for an alloy subframe tray that sat underneath the length of the subframe before morphing into a battery box. These were the main details, paired with the shock conversion and overflow relocation, that makes the tail as clean and minimal as it does. A flippable plate bracket was welded into the rear of the subframe for some strange reason, with our 3-1 Blindsiders bolting into the subframe directly for a super clean end finish. 

The front fairing was a parts bin special, pulled off a TRX850 cafe kit that used to be made by a bloke in Melbourne called Twig TT. We used a stock TRX850 fairing bracket out of mild steel with the frame mount lopped off and redone to suit the CBR600. Once we’d chopped and replaced the fairing stay supports to clear the turning circle, we were fortunate enough to be left with a twin cylinder front fairing that fitted the screamer’s wider frame. The tank was stock, but being a 90’s era Honda sports bike tank, these tanks always struggle to work on a cafe racer build when one is chasing that classic horizontal visual line parallel to the ground. The front fairing assisted, but it was only once we’d shaped up side covers with a couple of complex curves from aluminium that we could really see the lines starting to make sense.

We set to work on the seat pan, sticking to ABS plastic to keep the forming fairly simple and upholstery fitment nice and easy. Three densities of foam were stacked and then shaped, and this helped us keep the profile fairly slim whilst allowing for full days in the twisties; our wrists will fail long before our arse does. We’ve started using this almond vinyl a lot recently - it’s matte finish and hand feel is some of the best we’ve worked with. We decided to use it on this bike to break up all the darkness on the bike. Whenever we trim up our own bikes we like to take it to the next level, working on complex trimming production details that show our clients what we’re capable of doing when terms like “hours” and “budget” aren’t brought into the equation. This one is an adaptation of our Ridgeback style of design, with the centre ridgeback blending into lines that emulate the lines of a faux cowl on the rear of the seat.

PAINT

From there, we painted up the frame in a 2K mix of black and a touch of metallic silver flake; this came out nicely for a gloss black finish with a bunch of depth when under direct sunlight. The painted frame tied in nicely with our satin black motor, satin black powder-coat on the rear sets, sidestand & swingarm, and satin black cerakote for the exhaust system. The Daytona front fender was visually good enough to retain, so we began paint prep on the panels, taking care to make sure our primed and ready to paint panels were all as level as we could get.

When dealing with a satin finish clear coat, every little imperfection is brought into focus, and meticulous paint prep becomes even more important. The art deco bronze gold line work was laid with varying thicknesses that collect as they meet, and we paired this with large black dogs on the sides of the fairing rather than add another logo onto the tank - we really dig how the ‘no logo’ tank adds to the “What even is that?” reactions.