Seven Fifty cafe-racer. Chain guard

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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