Cafe Racer Ninja 250 build aka the polished turd

The backstory on this bike is that I picked it up about 8 years ago so I could teach my friends to ride. I bought it for $200, it was cosmetically beat up and wouldn't start. I took it home and charged the battery and it fired up. That was great luck considering at that time I knew very little about bikes and just started riding two years before.

I bought it for my best friend who was interested at the time but still to this day doesn't have his license but still talks about getting it. I taught about 5 people to ride. I rode it occasionally but it was beat up from being dropped so much.

I decided to do some fiberglass work and paint it. Unfortunately this was the first thing I ever painted. I used black primer and neon blue base, this caused the blue to become barney purple. So still ugly and the bike sat for years.

I got married and my wife is slightly interested in riding and liked the look of cafe racers. If she decided not to ride I would have a fun around town bike, win win. I love idea of a cafe racer, I was living with my parents and had a 1969 CB350. I tried to rebuild it but didn't have skills, disaster of a garage, and proper tools. I sold it out of frustration about 6 years ago. I regretted selling it and never finishing it.

I bought a house with a 2 door garage with a loft above the garage. It was the first thing I started working on. It had bare concrete floors and no drywall. Now I have the space and slowly all the tools I needed. This build took about 3 months.

All that is left to do it finely tune the jetting on the carbs but the roads are covered in snow right now. I just bought a powder coating gun and media blasting cabinet and will do most of the parts this winter. Picking up the oven tomorrow. I will do just about everything metal part on the bike myself except the frame since I won't have a big enough oven. My epoxy rattle can paint job is fine for now as a temp paintjob.

Here is the link for entire build, the details and the shop. I am slowly loading them off photobucket.

Dropbox link:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6if6yhca56b9ccd/7QjVREwMXC

The start.









Lots of battery acid damage
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Stripped




Primed with self etching primer. Once again this is a temporary paintjob and wanted to make sure everything fit together before I do a powder coating.


High Temp engine paint with a clear.


Epoxy Paint
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Valve Cover


Forks- Epoxy painted and Cleared


Radiator and fan painted. Carbs installed





Rusty exhaust. I removed the rust and painted with a 1200 degree paint. Then wrapped it in titanium exhaust wrap.



Painted the front and rear wheel. I rebuilt both calipers and painted them with caliper paint.



Centerstand painted and new spring


I decided to cut off all the tabs that hand off the rear of the bike. I then took about 6 inches off the rear subframe.


I welded the rear subframe back together and slightly change the angle.


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Now I wanted to round the rear out. The tube pictures was my first one and did a new one with a thicker more suited tube. I don't have a pipe bender so I made small cuts and slowly bent into the correct shape. Then welded and polished it out.




I didn't like the gaps in this picture so I later went with a larger tube which you will see later.