Lately we have been seeing a trend in the café racer scene. More and more builders are starting to look at the venerable Honda CB 750 to use as a base bike. We think that this could be the revival of the Honda café racers and we are digging it! Don’t get me wrong, we love seeing Triumphs, BMW’s and Moto Guzzi’s being chopped and rebuilt into tasty café racers and scramblers. But there is something about the shape and style of a JDM inline-four that catches our interest. After all, they did deliver super-bike performance for moped prices back in the day.

You may remember the name Jeremy Duchampt from some time ago. The Frenchman is responsible for two Ducati’s and a Yamaha TR-1 that we featured here on BikeBrewers not so long ago. When we received a message from the main man behind Jerem Motorcycles that he had built a Honda CB 750 Rothmans café racer, we got warm and fuzzy feelings in our bellies; we knew it had to be good! Oh boy were we in for a treat. This Honda is so elegant, the proportions are so well-balanced, it looks like the CB is doing 100 mph at stand still!

The foundation of this project is a Honda CB 750 F2, as it is officially called. A model which was produced by Honda from 1992 all the way up to 2007(!). Honda’s R&D department must have been very pleased with this, no doubt. On paper, the CB 750 produced around 75 hp and 65 Nm of torque, with a claimed weight of around 210 kg. No mind boggling specs, but there is more to it. The Seven Fifty stands out in it’s a simplicity, reliability, and overall reputation of being bulletproof.

What Jeremy did to this bike is extraordinary. The list of modifications is long, so here’s a brief summary.

• Custom front fender
• Modified subframe
• Custom café racer leather and Alcantara seat with stitching (Irina: Point saddler 34)
• Custom made cowl with integrated LED taillight (FFPro Design)
• LED bar-end indicators
• Bar-end mirrors
• LED vintage-style, round yellow headlight with custom brackets
• Keyless ignition (KAIROS RFID)
• Vintage speedo (FIVEACES)
• Laser-cut top triple clamp yoke (USVracing)
• Clip-ons with brown handlebar grips
• BREMBO brake master cylinder and levers
• Powder coated rims
• Modified rear shock absorber
• Air box removed to with DNA pod filters
• Blacked out engine, frame and swingarm
• Custom 4-in-1 exhaust
• Carb tuning
• Custom painting Rothmans Style (FFPro Design)

The way this café racer turned out is mesmerising. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, cigarette companies often sponsored race teams, one of which was Honda. Who remembers the NSR250, NSR500 or RC30? This Rothmans inspired design brings back memories of those days, where small displacement, high revving engines dominated the tracks and the streets. It’s not a secret that we would love to get our hands on this Honda. For now, we have to do with the pictures.

Builder details:
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Since the CB 750 competed directly with Triumph, BMW, and Harley-Davidson, it too became a popular object to modify. As far as we’re concerned, the Honda CB 750 is probably the most customized motorcycle ever! We covered numerous of projects that were built around the platform, and yes, HD-Triumph-BMW are also incredibly popular base bikes, but they just can’t compete with the Honda in terms of affordability; it is the people’s champion after all.

Its 2022 now, and still we get notifications of newly built motorcycles that revolve around the Honda CB 750. So, when the guys from Moto Adonis gave us a call, we answered. We have been featuring builds from the Dutch customizers more often recently, and the rate at which bikes leave their workshop is incredible. Make no mistake, these guys have an eye for detail, and they do it with a ton of passion. This might be the right time to mention that they have some room in their schedule and are now actively looking for new challenges. Make sure to head out to their website and reach out to the guys yourself!

Despite its superbike status in the late 1960s and early 1970s, nowadays when people think of the Seven Fifty, they think of a modest, soft, naked touring bike. Very reliable, easy to maintain, and how do we put this nicely, a bit boring. A challenge the Moto Adonis crew, which exists out of Arthur Renkema and Job Leussink, know how to deal with. As the team usually starts, at first a couple of ideas were sketched out on a piece of paper. Once the ideas started to become more concrete, a digital render was made on the computer. From those designs the owner of the Honda could get a good idea of the final product. Once he greenlit the render, the build could start.

The idea was to build a scrambler around the 2001 Honda CB Seven Fifty. A clean one at that. With some big ol’ knobby tires. Something you would want to have with you when the zombie apocalypse brakes out. The first order of business was to chop up the subframe, raise it by a few inches, and weld a shorter version back in place. This allowed for a pair of taller rear shocks. A simple bench seat was fabricated and upholstered by Miller Kustom Upholstery in diamond-stitched brown leather with black piping. Moto Adonis added their signature built-in tail light to the rear seat to keep things looking clean. A custom battery box was created to accommodate for the under-seat battery. MAD Exhausts are responsible for the sick stainless-steel exhaust system. Combined with the pod air-filters, this thing must sound loud!

Up front, a new handlebar was fitted for a more commanding stance. A minimalistic speedo provides all the necessary info, and the new LED round headlight ensure visibility at night. A pair of fork-gaiters prevent dirt and grime from sticking on the fork tubes. Custom short fenders at the front and rear help somewhat with that as well. The bar-end mirrors provide with rear-view vision and look spectacular on this Honda, especially in combination with the bar-end indicators. The Heidenau K60 dual sport tires look like they are up for the task. The grey color of the tank combined with the blacked-out engine, wheels, and swingarms really make this scrambler look great. To make sure that the CB also runs great, it was put on a dyno and tuned to a healthy 81 hp at the rear-wheel. Not bad at all!

Photo credits: Lennart Stolte

Builder details:
Moto Adonis
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Mad Max meets The Walking Dead

Survival Bike
Louis James, a business owner from Dorset England, got inspired by The Walking Dead and really liked the shows’ anti-hero Daryl Dixon’s modified Honda CB750. In fact, he liked it so much that he knew his next build had to be based on a Honda CB750 as well. Other builds you ask? Well, Louis likes his winter projects, and has built motorcycles in a shed before. Building a survival bike based on a CB750 was going to be a new experience, since Louis had never worked on a Honda CB750 before.

Dr. Frankenstein’s monster
This build was going to be a Frankenstein bike from the get-go. First he sourced a 1992 CB750 frame from eBay. That marked the starting point of the project really. According to Louis, the bike was built with parts from about 2 dozen other bikes! Building a bike with parts that were made for different motorcycles brings the difficulty threshold to a whole new level. Literally everything had to be modified.

Nuts ‘n Bolts
One of the hardest challenges was fitting the massive engine by himself without a hoist or even a stand at the time. That must have looked medieval. The engine came from Japan off a 2004 model CB750 with only 12,000 miles. This engine has a hydraulic clutch, which is something of a novelty on a CB750! The other hard challenge was getting the electrics working. Again, using unfamiliar parts doesn’t help with this. The list of parts used is pretty extensive:

• Frame from a 1992 Honda CB750
• Yamaha R1 front end
• Cognimoto lower clamp
• Hel braided brake and clutch lines
• Custom stainless steel battery box
• Unbranded custom modified fuel tank
• Continental Twinduro TKC-80 tires
• Pro taper Contour fat bars
• LED jeep wrangler headlight
• Square quad led spotlights with yellow lenses
• Mini LED indicators and tail and brake lights.
• Removable folding shovel as a rear fender!
• Glock holster for shoot of zombies
• Shotgun bandolier belt fitted to the tank
• Cafe Racer style seat
• Perforated stainless steel headboard
• Perforated stainless steel tank guards
• Shotgun cartridge handlebar ends covers
• Carburettors from a Honda CBX 750
• 4x pod Air filters
• Cotton gauze crankcase breather filters
• CNC billet clutch and brake levers + reservoirs
• Mini mirror
• Subframe engine crash protectors
• Modified original exhaust
• Kevlar exhaust wrap
• Light indicator instrument cluster from an old model Honda.

Apocalypse ready!
The results speak for themselves. This Honda was meant to look very tough and rough, and it does. It looks exactly how we imagined a bike built during an apocalypse would look like. With the chunky Conti’s TKC-80 and modified exhaust, this CB750 will take you anywhere whilst scaring away any uninvited visitors.

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This beauty is built by Martial De Campenaere. He was bitten by the cafe racer bug about a year ago and he decided to build one for himself. He did his research and soon found out that the Honda CB’s are the #1 pick for building a cafe racer, especially when it’s the first project. And that’s an obvious choice: lot’s of them are still out there, there is a huge amount of information to find, just like parts and references.

He sourced the interwebs and found a cheap machine for €500. He didn’t have a clear plan and was simply inspired by projects of others. When we asked him about the budget, he had a hard time to tell. “It didn’t cost that much, really. I simply did everything myself”. He stripped the bike and refurbished most parts and repainted the engine and frame. The engine was in a very good shape, so he only gave it some TLC with fresh gaskets and liquids. He took a gas tank of a CB750 KZand adapted it to the CB frame. After that, he hand-crafted the seat and rear hump out of polyester with custom leather upholstery. Just like the frame, he did the painting all by himself. Custom cafe racer parts where source from all over the internet like the head light, grips, mirrors, rear shocks, pod filters, mufflers, exhaust wrap (yes, it actually suits this build!), and the license plate holder. Not bad for a low budget cafe racer project!

Can we expect more from Martial? Oh yes! He’s already working on a new project! We look forward to it!

Don’t forget to check out Martial’s Instagram

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The most remarkable thing about this CB750 is that it’s amazingly clean with a color palette that hits a sweet spot. The entire electric system has been remodeled and found the center just under the modified gas tank, which comes from an earlier CB750. The stance of this machine is absolutely perfect which you can see from the side: its bone line is 100% straight from front to rear. The small (but wide) seat are matched beautifully with the gas tank and the wide and low place handlebar give the rider a somewhat upright riding position, which looks pretty comfortable. Unfortunately, I don’t have more specs than this and from what I can see, but I do know that this is a true beauty (maybe one for our top 10 Honda CB’s?).

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A couple of weeks ago I’ve visited our friends at Wrench Kings and owner Joost Dingemans told me everything about his journey with his workshop and his ambitious future plans. It was great to feel the awesome vibe of a proud guy standing with two feet on the ground (in his own workshop). Of course, we’ve talked A LOT about custom bikes and he shared me some of his latest builds he didn’t publish yet. Around two weeks ago I’ve published this cool BMW R100 Classic Racer, today it’s a beautiful Honda CB750K7 from 1979 that gets a spotlight view.

This CB750 was a commissioned build for Stijn Bauland and the Kings were asked to give this bike a complete overhaul. Stijn did some optical works on the bike himself, but he wanted to turn it into a more cleaner and tighter machine which he can use on a regular basis. They got one special assignment: the bike shouldn’t take his self too serious, or like Stijn says: “a cool, not to perfect looking CB750 with a rough edge”.

Of course, that was a cool challenge. But how do you build a clean, overhauled bike that can’t look brand new or fully restored? So the Kings started sketching and designing. After a couple of drafts, they decided to sandblast everything to get rid of the rust and grease and then give it a clear coating. With this approach, all dents and holes are kept “in tact”. After getting the “GO” of their client, they started working on the bike.

Like most of their builds, the bike was completely stripped down to the last piece. They started working on the frame. The rear of the frame was shortened but kept its original seat pan. So they’ve reused this and shortened the entire rear end of the frame for an original, but more compact look. In order to keep the original look of the CB750 in tact, they’ve spent a lot of time in refurbishing original parts.

The wheels were powder coated and got a set of new laces. The engine got a necessary overhaul and a couple of selected parts got a new coating. But with their plan in mind, they’ve also left some parts alone to get some more “oldness” back on the bike. The overall result of this approach led to a bike with a complete new coating, which makes it shine like a new one, but if you take a closer look, you can see clearly that this bike already has a history of almost 40 years.

The bike also got a complete new wiring loom with a few simplifications like a CDI regulator/rectifier in one and mBlaze LED indicators. They removed the control lights between the gauges, but kept the original gauges in place (a bit closer together if you take a good look). The ignition is relocated and they’ve reused the aftermarket heated grip system. The rather bulky original headlight was replaced by a black 7″ Rhino headlight. Just like the headlight, the taillight and rear indicators are replaced by a smaller, but original looking models. A little gimmick was the placement of a single fog light on the crash protectors.

Other modifications include steel brake lines, DNA pod filters, wide handlebar, 340 shocks, Dunlop Trailsmart tires, a TomTom adapter on the handlebar, and a set of retro rubbers on the front fork. The original exhaust pipes were used, but the bike got a big fat, modern looking Sebring muffler (there’s the “not-to-serious”-part!). Another cool gimmick is the laser-cut side-panel with the Japanese “Rising Sun”, a wink to the birthplace of the motorcycle. The beautiful leather seat is created by Silvermachine.

The result is a totally custom bike that still looks like it’s original. If you wouldn’t know better (and don’t see that big fat muffler), you would believe it came from the factory like this. Great machine, great job!

For those guys who are in the neighborhood or traveling trough Holland, feel free to visit the Wrench Kings shop in Utrecht. They have regular BBQ’s and they organize a bunch of cool things. And the shop is always open for likeminded people:

More info:

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Photo’s by Bas Duijs.

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The Honda CB750 is one of those bikes of the glory days that is being customized over and over and over and over again. Sometimes I see extremely sophisticated (and complicated) builds, sometimes they’re pretty bad. But in order to build a cool, custom(ized) bike, the list of modifications doesn’t have to be that long. If you take a quick look at this CB750 brat, it looks like it’s coming straight from the factory. And sometimes that’s simply beautiful.

This CB750 brat is built by Redeemed Cycles, who have a strong bond with classic Honda’s if you take a look at their list of builds. Not too many words, just eye candy. Have a great weekend!

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It’s based on a 1992 CB750 Nighthawk with a rock solid 747cc air-cooled engine that puts out a pretty 75hp and 64Nm. Not that impressive if you compare it to, for example, today’s CB’s, but if you can keep the weight down and add some horses, you sure can create a powerful fun bike with, of course, that irresistible retro look. They took the complete front end of a 2006 Suzuki GSX-R 600 to upgrade suspension and braking. The matt red forks and brake calipers give the bike some extra appeal, which consistently is used on the gas tank, which comes from an older CB750 (’78). Unlike many others, they also used the rear end of that same Gixxer, converting it into a mono shock setup. To keep the rear as clean as possible, a new subframe was fabricated and a “tuck ‘n roll” seat with a humped back hoop was placed.

The new rear end not only aligns with the new front end, it also gives the opportunity to use a wider range of (modern day) tires. They’ve used Pirelli Scorpion Trail II Dual Sport Tires. To make sure that all the horse powers still are available, the engine has been overhauled and painted, a new 4-in-1 exhaust was placed and the carburetors were rejetted. The air intake is a hand-milled aluminum unit, very beautiful. Other hand-milled parts are the rear sets and triple tree with integrated LED indicators.

Of course, the electrical system has been upgraded too with a Motogadget M-unit as the heart connected to all kinds of Motogadget goodies like an emblazoned gauge set, bar-end indicators, and wireless key system. The LED headlight comes from J.W. Speaker. Sum it all up and you have a machine that’s candy for the eye but also handles like a modern day ride. Well done!

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Hard to define this CB750, so let’s call it (b)ratstyle built by Hamad Al Romaithi from Abu Dhabi Since his childhood, Hamad was obsessed with motorcycles, what’s been canalized to a passion. In 2016 he started a small shop called Bikers Oasis to build motorcycles and sell small series of parts and apparel. This rough looking bike is called the Rusty Bullet and got second place in the Custom Show Emirates, one of the biggest custom shows in the Middle East.

Hamad found a 1974 CB750 and he wanted to create a raw, pure and minimalistic machine. He started with the engine, which got a complete refurbishment. In order to give the bike a raw look, he soda blasted the engine and carburetors for a more authentic feeling. To keep everything in place in the cutting desert sand, he finished it off with a heat-resistant clear coating.

The wiring is kept to a minimum and all unnecessary switches and dashboard indicator lights have been removed. Since things can heat up pretty fast in Abu Dhabi, he kept the engine overheat indicator, which has been mounted in the head light, just as the toggle for high/low beam. The straight drag handlebar got some vintage brake and clutch levers and to activate and deactivate the indicator lights Hamad created small mini push buttons. Finally, he created a bratstyle seat and gave the bike some Firestone Deluxe tires.

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The Honda CB750 is one of those machines that’s been done over and over and over again. The “world’s first superbike” just seems to be a safe pick for customization. And that’s no surprise. There are thousands of machines produced the last four decades, they’re reliable, there’s a massive aftermarket for parts, and yes: they’re pretty powerful and fun. But the problem with a lot of these projects is that every single machine looks the same and it’s hard to stand out from the crowd with a custom CB750. The French Jonathan Nicolas of Nicolas Motors decided to give it a try and walked the extra mile with this 1981 CB750 Monoshock.

Jonathan started this project around three years ago. In his spare time, he customizes both cars and bikes, just for fun. He calls himself a “self-taught shed builder”. His objective with this project was to achieve something different out of the CB750 and a monoshock setup was one of his own requirements. Since this is a pretty delicate job, Jonathan spent a lot of time constructing this part. If you take a good look you can see that the original swing arm, which look like Chinese chopsticks, is still in place. But in order to cope with all the new forces, it’s been completely rebuilt and reinforced. He contacted local partner EMC Suspensions to supply the build-to-order and fully adjustable shock  To stay in line at the front end, he used the forks and radial braking setup of a Suzuki GSXR.

The 17″wheels come from Cognito Moto, which can handle modern day tubeless rubber. The front is a 120, rear 160. Together with the suspension and braking setup, Jonathan has all the ingredients for a super agile machine with super handling. So just bolting in the 36-year-old engine wasn’t really an option so he completely overhauled and tuned the engine and placed Keihin CR racing carburetors with open filters to gain some performance. In order to keep some of the original design in place, he mounted a beautiful set of 4 in 4 exhausts with chrome reverse cone mufflers.

Hawk-eyed readers may have mentioned that there’s no oil reservoir. That’s right, the oil runs through the frame. Cleaning up the old triangle section also means that you have to reconsider the wiring. For this Jonathan could only think of one name: Motogadget. He completely rewired the machine with the M-unit V2 as the electrical heart. The triple tree also comes from Cognito Moto with an integrated Motoscope Mini. To give it a classic finish, he fitted an analog tachometer. Other parts from the Motogadget catalog are m.Blaze discs indicators and m.Switch mini push buttons.

Being non-professional resulted in a project that took roughly 1300 hours to complete. But that seems well spent…! What a piece of engineering, great! I think that I’ll need to update my list of 10 Best Honda CB Cafe Racers…

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