“With a 1950s-style airplane in mind, we used raw aluminum, hard aluminum rivets, jet nut fasteners and copper oil lines.” Nice touches include the aluminum Kodak film canisters doing duty as brake fluid reservoirs, a Ford Model A tail light, a one-off handmade exhaust system with hand-rolled cones, and of course that cool, big, yellow headlamp. “The custom fabrication list on this is long,” Adam says. “I’m not a huge show guy,” Adam admits, “I like riding, so I wanted to make it functional and fun to ride, and it is.” Engine modifications have been kept to a relative minimum, with most of the work going into the details that make the bike.Įxcepting a 0.020-inch overbore, the engine is mostly stock, although it has been treated to things like black anodized cases and valve covers. Except for the gas cap and headlamp shell, there’s no chrome on the bike, and the paint, Lotus Gunmetal Grey but with the specified metallic ingredient mostly eviscerated, is decidedly muted in tone. I’ve got a Yamaha R5 that’s rough, and I love it.”Īlthough Adam ended up taking a different, more refined route from the hand-hammered approach, flashy this bike’s not, at least not in the traditional manner. “Most of the bikes I was seeing were kind of budget cafés or full-on show bikes with lots of chrome, but I wanted a bike that respected the culture of the café racer, maybe a big headlight mounted high, but nothing flashy,” Adam says, adding, “To be honest, when I started this off I was gonna do a tail that was hammered out by hand and not be perfect. Working with Paul and Mark, Adam’s vision of a neo-café racer was realized, and the result is stunning. At first, he couldn’t find anyone who could do the work he wanted, but then he stumbled on Paul Schaller and Mark Cross at WBS Fabrication, a specialty fabrication and restoration shop northwest of Columbus. “I wanted more than I was capable of doing with my own hands,” he realized. With a 1978 Triumph T140V Bonneville as his foundation, Adam started the build on his own, but quickly found himself in over his head. “I wanted to build a café racer, because I think cafés are going to take over the whole bobber and chopper thing.” “It hadn’t made it here yet when I started this a few years ago,” Adam says. A rider since age 8 (“I’ve had some sort of motorcycle my entire life,” he says), Adam, now 37, says the café movement was late to his hometown of Columbus, Ohio. The idea of building “09” came a few years ago, as Adam watched the neo-café movement gathering steam. The buildĪlthough he wasn’t around for the original café movement, Adam has found himself inextricably caught up in its revival. Fifty some years later, both the Ace Café and the café racer culture endure, iconic symbols of a day long gone, yet still invoking many of the same feelings they did so many years ago.Īnd while the times may have changed, the same need for expression that drove the original rockers remains, adopted by a new generation of riders and builders like Adam, who continue the café tradition of hand-crafted, individualized motorcycles. Record-racing didn’t last, but the Ace Café and the Ton-Up Boys etched themselves into the collective consciousness as images of rebellion, freedom and power. “It’s all about the history of the café, of the Ton-Up Boys racing down to Hanger Lane and back before the record had finished,” Adam says, marveling at the thought of racing on public roads to the time of a jukebox record. Period.”Īsk Adam about the moniker he picked for his café’d Triumph - Hanger Lane “09” - and you’ll quickly learn he built this bike as homage to an era he never experienced, but wishes he had. Ask Adam why he picked a 1978 Triumph T140V Bonneville as the foundation for his café racer, and his response is immediate and unequivocal: “As long as I can remember, when I think about a café racer, I think Triumph. You might meet the nicest people on a Honda, but Adam Wright will tell you that the coolest café racers are still British.
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