Modern Cafe Convenience

January 23, 2020 | By Mike Seate

Regular readers of the magazine will be familiar with our ongoing Triumph Trident 900 project bike. The one-off special is being built by our team with assistance from Cafe Racer Kits, a UK firm who specialize in very comprehensive and well-engineered custom bike parts. The parts and accessories included are pretty much summed up by the company’s name as our Triumph kit was graced with everything from a cool, powdercoated subframe, new fuel tank and fenders, undertray, battery box and yes, even a tasty, humpbacked cafe seat unit. There’s been a great deal of buzz surrounding the bike as well there should be: early Hinckley Triumph 900s were genuine gems of the modern musclebike era, built to be incredibly reliable, quick and blessed with handling that belies their considerable girth. The CR Kits 900 plan helps the Trident/Speed Triple or Sprint 900s to shed a good 80 pounds which should radically improve the already impressive performance.

CR’s Ian Saxcoburg recently chatted to us about a new addition to their offerings: a cafe kit designed to soup-up Yamaha’s speedy middleweight FZR600. The four-cylinder 600 is far more popular overseas for its flexible powerplant, light weight and all-around practicality and what few FZR 600’s you see here in the States can be had for just a few grand, making them perfect donor bikes for the CR Kits conversion. We’ve still a bit of a ways to go before completing our Triumph special, so anyone who rebuilds a Yamaha using the Cr Kits parts, be sure to send us some images and e-mail us to compare nots. Ride on!