If you tap “cafe racer” in google or another web search engine’ search line, you may find a lot of pictures of subject bikes without any kind of chain guard. But in my opinion chain guard is very important part of a motorcycle.
I can even put up with riding fenderless motorcycle in rain, but couldn’t afford idea of chain lubricant on my bottom and all over my back. And whatever ultimate cafe-racer you build, chain guard is not such a loss in design and gain in the weights to make a bike without it. So chain guard presents in all my projects.
This time I started from bending of 60cm-long and 3mm-thick aluminum plate into U-shaped profile. As I have no special bending tools it was a really tricky work, but I did it right with only two pieces of steel L-profile, vise, wooden beam and heavy hammer. I managed to do it even without surface damaging.
I used Zephyr 750 swingarm in this project and I had original Zephyr chain guard at hand, it made all measuring and cutting more easy to do.
After cutting and bending I had a lot of initial sandpapering all inside and out.
Holes which decades ago were a part of struggle for lowering of motorcycle weight now became a classic element in cafe-racer parts design. After another course of sandpapering and I mostly finished the part.
Similarly to original Zephyr chain guard mine also has separable bracket for shock eye mounting point:
Here it is, polished and assembled:
And installed onto the swingarm:
Sure, it’s hard not to notice “undrilled” area on inside side of the chain guard and three holes in the cross-piece of the swingarm.
What are they for you may ask? See it in next chapter:-)
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Hi – do you make these to sell please ? Can you quote me a price ? Thank you , regards MARTIN
Hi Martin,
I replied to you via email.
Kind regards,
Nazar
Hi
Can you make one for a Honda cb 750, 1981 And how much does it cost?
Best regards
Jakob
Hi Jakob,
I prefer to keep parts like this chain guard (or similar chain guard for KZ650 project) unique and distinctive features of our project. Besides, without a swingarm and original chain guard it’s mostly impossible to make a custom chain guard.
Kind regards,
Nazar