It’s too bad there aren’t any “before” pictures of this 1972 Honda CB 450, since the way it looks today, you’d never know it was 47 years old. I hope the custom cafe trend
continues unabated. These builds seem to keep getting better: cleaner,
more understated, really pro results. This one from German outfit
Crooked Motorcycles is no exception.
The story is, two friends named Jakob and Dominikus founded a
custom motorcycle shop without meaning to–-they both enjoyed customizing
motorcycles, but didn’t set out to form a business. You know how it
goes, you build something, and someone likes it enough to buy it, so you
build another one. These two found this very old CB 450 in a friend’s garage, and thought it might be worthy of restoration.
It
hadn’t run in at least eight years, and wasn’t stored very well:
everything about it needed refinishing. Bless Soichiro Honda’s heart,
they changed out all the fluids and filters, fitted a new battery, and
that old engine started right up. That’s usually the first test when
gauging whether a bike is worth restoring, and it passed with flying
colors.
They dubbed the build “From Beast to Beauty” and having seen plenty of unloved old UJMs,
I believe the “beast” part. They stripped the bike down to the frame,
repainted or refinished everything, de-tabbed the frame and bobbed its
rear end. The tiny new lithium-ion battery is stuffed into the custom
tail section, and the airbox replaced with pods which leaves the rest of
the bike with a clean, simple look. That little 450cc parallel twin
engine sits like a shiny black jewel in a shiny black setting.
Because
no cafe build is complete without wrapped headers, it seems, they
wrapped and mounted up a 2-into-2 Hattech exhaust to replace the
stocker. If nothing else, the system adds to the blacked-out look of the
bike and probably lends one heck of a singing voice.
The
original handlebars have been stripped in favor of clip-ons and, we
hope, once the bike is on the road, some bar-end mirrors. Since we all
know about the wiring situation
on very old Japanese motorcycles, the team at Crooked rebuilt the
harness and replaced the original dash, taillight and turn signals in
favor of small, clean, modern units all by Motogadget.
This
CB 450 is now a thing of rare beauty but also, even at its advanced
age, puts out 45hp, so on its new YSS suspension and Coker classic
Diamond tires it’s definitely no slouch. Are you inspired yet? We sure
are.
