‘Tis a fascinating and strange time to be in the market for custom cafe racer parts. Or parts for just about any type of personalized vehicle. Thanks to the wonder/curse that is the Internerd, builders can source parts from places around the globe that were previously unavailable to average punters. Well, punters without the craving for endless travel…Case in point: we’re slowly amassing parts to build a complete 1959 Norton Dominator a motorcycle for which even reproduction parts are scarcer than honest politicians. Short of visiting a swap meet (aka autojumble in Brit-speak) finding bits for 1950s Nortons previously involved scouring dusty old bike shops operated by equally dusty old gents who, typically, would just as soon sit on their stashes of rare British bike parts until the Grim Reaper collected them than sell them off. Ah, but enter the 21st Century global marketplace. Today, we can search through several electronic pages full of all we’d ever need to make the dream of owning a vintage Dommie a roaring, oil-seeping reality. We’ve found everything from hand-made fenders, fuel tanks, tank badges, groovy old front fender license plates – affectionately called “pedestrian slicers” by mischiveous Rockers- and even a set of those oddball, torpedo-shaped, art deco Norton mufflers. At small specialty shops here in the States, we’ve located lots of parts made in Mexico and Central America that make breathing life back into ancient Britbikes a breeze, and laying them all out on the floor of our workshop reveals just how quickly we can acheive our goals. When building our first Triton cafe racers back in 19945, the parts-gathering took over a year- today, we ca expect to cut that by 3/4, easily.
The Chinese are cranking our plastic retro headlamps that cost a fraction of what you’d pay for an original, though some readers have warned us that the quality of some so-called bargain parts can be questionable at best. I guess it’s all part of an emerging parts aftermarket that’s destined to change the nature of what bits a builder can get their hands on and which bikes remain rusty piles forever. Whatever the case, we’re glad to see some many options available. Build a Vincent from scratch, anyone?