Take the 125 cc Cafe Racer Challenge.

Robs proposed Cafe Racer project

The 125 cc Cafe Racer Challenge

"It all started on a Sunday night in the U.K. A few of us were thinking about what we were going to do over the winter period and one guy was talking about doing up a Honda CB125. His other (possibly better) half had been saying that he only worked on things for other people and that he needed some drive to get his own projects finished. He and I started talking and a few years ago I had thought of doing up a KH125 in to a café racer (unfortunately I sold it later in the year without doing anything to it). As the evening progressed we started discussing the idea more and more in detail and started to jokingly finalise some rules and requirements to the challenge.

The next day we spoke about it again and decided that it probably wasn’t a bad idea. The competition aspect was the drive that we both needed to finish something like this so we decided that we would go for it. Over the next week we talked about it in more depth and came up with some rules and requirements. Some of these rules were ‘suggested’ by our better halves (mainly the ones regarding cash limits!) and I’m sure there will be more added later (Rules).

As we talked to other people, some of them were daft enough to show an interest! We then decided that it was probably not a bad idea to have more than the two of us involved. It was then that we thought it might be a good idea to get something down on paper and make it a bit more 'official'.

The Challenge is open to anyone! if your interested just send us an email on CafeRacer125cc@groups.msn.com and we'll try to help as best we can!"

There aren’t rules many at the moment. We wanted to keep it simple.

1) The bike has to be a 125cc bike (but it can be any ‘flavour’, 4 stoke, 2 stroke, single cylinder, twins, etc.)

2) The bike has to remain road and learner legal (part of the final test will be an MOT and a Dyno test to make sure it conforms with the DVLA’s rules).

3) After the bike has been purchased the budget for all work/modifications (not including the MOT or the Dyno test) must NOT exceed £600."