Cafe Racer – Quicksilver

So what is a Café Racer? Back in the 1950’s, a working class sub culture swept through London and other cities and shattered the drab and orderly calm of post war Britain. The Cafe Racers, did not just race motor bikes, they built them, with little money but a lot of ingenuity.

Home built Café Racers were the closest things to pure Grand Prix Race Bikes that these young men could achieve. Dressed in black leather, with slicked back hair, café racers exuded a romance with speed and daring and an escape from the daily drudgery of a working class life. This is the true heart of the Café Racer culture, freedom with speed.

Quicksilver is the liquid metal Mercury and in ancient mythology, the swift messenger of the Gods. We think our 1976 Honda CB750 Café Racer meets that vision, a hand built special designed for speed on the open road.

Sunday morning, early, just after sunrise. You brew a coffee while pulling on riding boots, a black leather jacket and deerskin riding gloves. Beyond a smooth two-lane asphalt road that undulates and curls along the riverbank…..outside Quicksilver waits.

The plan was to build a super fast old school cafe racer with resto-mod components. This bike had to handle well, go fast, stop hard and look like a quintessential cafe racer from the 1970’s. The 1976 Honda CB750F was the perfect platform for this build. We started by stripping the bike to the bare frame and then reinforced the stiffness by adding bracing similar to the Honda CR750 factory racers. We also constructed our own box sectioned steel swing arm 1 inch longer than stock. We needed the width and stiffness as we were planning on using 1987 Suzuki GSXR750 18″ cast aluminum wheels for both front and rear. We manufactured billet triple clamps with the standard F offset to create a swift turning bike with perfect stability at any speed. The forks are 87 GSXR750 as well with race tech springs to balance the new ETech fully adjustable 13.5″ shocks. We used the GSXR rotors and calipers and powdercoated the frame and wheels in gloss black.