Classic Motorcycle Mechanics

Project Triumph CRK Café Racer part 3 Digital trickery

Electrical circuitry is simple, yes? Join up the wires between a lamp and a battery and, hey presto! illumination is provided.

Or so I thought, with distant memories from soldering tiny nickel-silver models in my school days barely helping to meet the challenge I’d presented myself with the CRK 1200 Triumph project.

If you’ve seen the first two parts of the project in CMM, you should be aware that I’d had the 24-year-old 1200 Trophy tourer stripped to its bare chassis, then cut off the rear sub-frame and replaced it with the CRK version that bolts and pins into the remaining stubs. I’d sourced a handlebar kit that bolted onto the top yoke, and found a suitable headlamp from my spares.

Ian Saxcoburg, who runs Café Racer Kits from the Isle of Wight, has experience as a design engineer in the nautical world, and six or so years ago decided to combine this with his enthusiasm for building special motorcycles by offering bolt-on kits to convert cheap-to-source donor machines, such as Honda’s CX500 V-twin and early Hinckley Triumphs, into sassy café racers.

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