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BMW Cafe Bikes

rd400racer

http://www.rd400racer.com
As you can tell from my post count I'm fairly new to the BMW scene. I love cafe bikes. I've built a Ducati cafe from a Monster and cafe RD400. But I really don't know much about BMW's in general. Yes, I have read some of the cafe build on this site (not all 80+ pages!).

My question is, what type of bikes did both of these start with? Obviously the black one is a 75/6 (still don't really know what that means) and I have no clue what the red one is. The red one is a generic pic I found somewhere. The black one was parked in Lot 3 next to where we camped for the MotoGP this weekend.

Any enlightenment can get me going in the correct path. I personally like the black one (mono-shock).


bmwcafe.jpg

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bmwcafe2.jpg
 
The black one is sweet! I'd gladly park that one in my garage and stare at it longingly. I might even ride it from time to time.
 
Best I can say is don't wait too long!

Let's see....I have two 80's 750F's that I want to make a Freddie Spencer Replica with, three RD125's that I want to turn into one pitbike, a beat up old RD400 racebike that I'm bringing back to life and and Alfa Romeo with a blown engine.

I figure I'll get around to the BMW cafe around 2021:laugh


I just want to keep an eye out for parts while cruising C-list, but I don't even really know what year etc to look for.
 
Best I can say is don't wait too long!

Let's see....I have two 80's 750F's that I want to make a Freddie Spencer Replica with, three RD125's that I want to turn into one pitbike, a beat up old RD400 racebike that I'm bringing back to life and and Alfa Romeo with a blown engine.

I figure I'll get around to the BMW cafe around 2021:laugh


I just want to keep an eye out for parts while cruising C-list, but I don't even really know what year etc to look for.

An old friend of mine has Mike Baldwins old 1024 cc Superbike based on the CB-900F. He also has some neat artifacts like a clutch cover Freddie Spencer ground through at Laguna Seca and a head from Michael Woo's bike that has some damage incurred in another race.

An exact replica of one of these bikes can be created but it will cost you fifty grand or more to do it. I know because I investigated doing one myself. My friend has the actual HRC molds for the engine cases, but you would need to find a foundry to cast them. Good luck with that. The carbs were machined from a single billet of aluminum. Yup, four carbs carved from one piece of metal. I have seen a box of these in a garage, but you won't find any more anywhere that I know of, and you will pay the owner of them handsomely indeed, or you will use a non-authentic substitute. You will spend as much as you would for a good used late model BMW paying the gent in Santa Barbara to re-create the race bike frame. The custom machined triple clamps are another story. At least the fork legs and sliders are stock Gold Wing parts modified internally! Performance Machine long ago removed all of those magnesium wheels from circulation because as they age they get brittle and fail. Kaz Yoshima could still re-create the HRC exhaust. The cylinder heads are not from the street bike but custom HRC pieces. Again, good luck finding one. My friend had a personal relationship with someone at Honda when they were tossing all of these parts out. He bought Baldwin's bike just as it was raced at the last race of the season (the season finale at Daytona when the AMA book ended the season with races at Daytona) before Honda switched to the big V-4 for a mere $1500. The rest was free, Honda staff were tossing it in a dumpster! Today the stuff is priceless.

All that work for a bike that any modern 600 cc sport bike could easily humiliate. I gave it a pass.

The red bike looks like it might have been an R-100GS with a monolever swingarm conversion and a Monolever R-80 or R-100 final drive. The fork is from a Monolever R-80 or R-100, as are the wheels (the rear was shared with drum brake K-75's and the front shared with K-75's and K-100's). The GS tank was ditched for a standard R-80/R-1000 tank.

R-75/6; R for rad, the German word for wheel, which is their shorthand for a motorcycle (motorrad literally means motor wheel, pretty descriptive really). 75 means it's a 750 cc engine. The /6 part is how BMW designates succeeding generations of a powerplant. Before it came a /5 or "slash five". After it came the /7, of which the red bike is a version.
 
The single shock on the black bike is a custom jobber. The swingarm was modified to mount it as well as the chassis.
 
mono-Shockers

The top bike is a mono-shock, which puts it as an R80 or R100 from 1986 on...the Monoshock bikes are 81-87 R80G/S, 83-84 R80ST, 85-87 R65, 85-87 R80 and R80RT, 91 R100 Classic,
88-92 R100RS and 88-95 R100RT. That not a tank from the Mystik, but I suppose the frame could be.....


A really trick mono-shock R90S was campaigned by Butler and Smith in the first Superbike series..
 

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The top bike is a mono-shock, which puts it as an R80 or R100 from 1986 on...the Monoshock bikes are 81-87 R80G/S, 83-84 R80ST, 85-87 R65, 85-87 R80 and R80RT, 91 R100 Classic,
88-92 R100RS and 88-95 R100RT. That not a tank from the Mystik, but I suppose the frame could be.....


A really trick mono-shock R90S was campaigned by Butler and Smith in the first Superbike series..

I like how the frame tube cuts through the velocity stack. Is that the bike Reg Pridmore used to keep on the showroom of his dealership in Ventura?
 
I like how the frame tube cuts through the velocity stack. Is that the bike Reg Pridmore used to keep on the showroom of his dealership in Ventura?

Word is that this is the one surviving Butler&Smith R90S Superbike that Steve McLaughlin rode to victory in 1976 at Daytona.....the world's first superbike race.....there were three bikes built (Fisher, McLaughlin, Pridmore) and it's now at the museum in Munich.

Yeah, the frame tube goes through the velocity stack, the barrels were shortened so
shorter con-rods could be used and to allow a greater lean angle, the S fairing was attached to the frame -ala RS fairings-rather than common practice, and it had a triangulated mono-shock on the rear.

Cook Neilson and Phil Schilling of Cycle magazine fame were campaigning the California Hot Rod, a.k.a. "Old Blue", a 883cc Ducati Desmo at the same time. When Butler and Smith rolled out the much-modified BMW R90S, Neilson is reputed to have said, "It seems we've fallen behind in our cheating".
 
off the cafe topic but....

This is what #83 looked like at Laguna Seca five months after it won at Daytona.
McLaughlin was still the rider....up to shortly before this picture was taken....
 

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Prolly a silly ass question, :) BUT.............anyone ever make cafe racer style bikes out of the newer models? ie....1100s or 1200's I have an extra 1100s sittin' around and would like to maybe give it a go. :scratch
 
Prolly a silly ass question, :) BUT.............anyone ever make cafe racer style bikes out of the newer models? ie....1100s or 1200's I have an extra 1100s sittin' around and would like to maybe give it a go. :scratch

Do a bit of research and you will find it is a very slowly growing segment of the cafe' set. The cost of donor project bikes and small aftermarket cafe' style parts may be a reason it is a slow segment.
 
Do a bit of research and you will find it is a very slowly growing segment of the cafe' set. The cost of donor project bikes and small aftermarket cafe' style parts may be a reason it is a slow segment.

Thanks for the response. I thought not too many folks have converted the oil or hexheads, I still might give it a go.:dunno
 
Call me crazy, but I would like to see a F650CS done up as a modern/retro cafe bike.
Nop off that dangling license bracket thing, create a nice bum-stop seat back, some low bars with bar-end mirrors, a little bikini windshield/fairing to add on top of the headlight nacelle, a cover for the divot on the "tank" and get rid of the handles on the tank to clean it up. Oh! and a decent looking reverse megaphone muffler.
 
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