A real low buck mod is to turn the original bars upside down . It lowers the bike significantly, makes for a racey look and is fun, but yeah, it looks cheap too. (July 2017)

To get the right look, a used pair of Tommaselli clip ons were purchased.

The clip ons look a lot better. To the right you can see how the forks have come up through the triple tree to make the front end lower. The suspension will be lowered later.

Of course a cafe racer needs a trade mark racer seat. Blue high density foam was used to cut the plug from, and try out the look and stance. At about this time the idea to have the bike exhibited at the West Coast Motorshow came to me. I wrote a suggestion on the online form for my "genuine" barn find cafe racer, and then all but forgot about it in a few days.

To get a really racy sitting position rear sets are needed. The shifter has been turned backwards, and this effectively moves the left foot of the rider backwards. The rear passenger foot pegs have been moved forward a bit to fit the shifter position. Of course the original foot pegs were deleted. (August 2017)

Weeks later an email arrived with the news that my racer had been accepted for the show. Ouch! Just a couple weeks to go before we had to be done, so the work was commenced with a bit more zeal.   My being a car guy, the thought of using a Model A Ford rear light felt like a great idea. All great ideas don't work, so as the good looking Ford light didn't look good at all in this position, the idea was abandoned. By the way, here the forks are already lowered, and they don't protrude out off the top triple anymore

In stead the more normal approach to a cafe racer seat was continued from the blue foam thingy cut and sawed out of blocks. More sawing, cutting and subsequent sanding was followed by brown packaging tape and fiber glass and resin. In this pic the glass is held in position with fiber glass grade masking tape, as the resin doesn't really stick to the packaging tape used as a release agent in the plug. A few more layers of glass were added. After the fiberglass had cured, the foam plug was dug out with knives and chisels, and the seat was reinforced on the inside with another few layers of fiberglass.

It took some sanding and bondo work to get this nice end result, but it was well worth it, as this picture shows. Some red and black primer was sprayed on to make it look a bit like it belongs.

Luckily I had some soft leatherette saved from a previous project, so I could sew a padded seat and get the bike all ready to race. Finally, just a day or so before the West Coast Motorshow, the racer is done in the right color, and weathered to make for a nice barn find look.