My neighbour's new bike

[guest7]

I was passing a neighbour's garage this morning and look what I saw:



It's based on an XS500 and sounds fantastic on open pipes. He bought it last week for a very reasonable (imho) £1,000 from the bloke who built it. The quality of the work is excellent.

It's funny what's being cafe racerised these days,

GC

[johnr]

in all honesty, regardless of its quality, the donor bike is a pretty poor one. had it been the 650 then it would be easily worth 2k, but the twin cam 500 twin is a horrible horrible engine, it doesnt know whether it wants to plod or rev and thus doesnt do either very well. it would have been better if he had started with pretty much anything else. all i can say in its defence is that its a nice colour!!

it will match the AA van that he is going to be getting well aquainted with!!!

[guest7]

To be fair, it's going to do 500 miles at year at the absolute most. I agree with you that it's a strange choice for a cafe racer, but like some of these little bobbers that are starting to appear (see current issue of CBG for instance) the end results are quite pleasing on the eye.

What other nice 500/650/750 twin cylinder air-cooled donor bikes can you get your hands on these days for cheap money? (we've already established that big singles are getting expensive).

And talking of Classic Bike Guide, it's worth buying this month for the full article on the McIntyre Matchless (a lust object of mine), let alone the Gold Star poster that comes free too.

GC

[johnr]

gs500, cb500, er5, 450 superdream, r80 bm, plenty of middleweight former training school bikes floating about. at least theres a track record of reliability and plenty of spares about.