'86 Honda Shadow 1100 Café racer

I’m Stefan van der Riet, a 24 year old hobby bike builder from The Netherlands. I’m an airplane mechanic for a living, and started customizing/building mopeds and bikes since I was 15 years old. The first bike I did was together with my dad. After my dad passed away, I had the thrive to continue bike building. After several simple builds, I wanted to build something that wasn’t a typical bike to build a caferacer.

Then I had my ‘86 Honda Shadow VT1100C which wasn’t the smartest, but it certainly was the best option to choose. The frame of a Chopper is not straight and stretched like a caferacer would need to look like. After some cardboard molds I made, I saw broadly what would be the end result. Worked out a small sketch, and figured out really quick that the original tank must be thrown at the garbage. Let’s start from scratch I thought. First time I ever did sheetmetal work, but I managed to make an English wheel. The frame of the English wheel was easily made, I made the top and lower wheels on my lathe, and it worked great! I bought some 1mm sheetmetal and started with the backside of the bike, that all went well. Then the gas tank, no idea where I had to start! But after a few tries, the tank looked better than ever expected!

So many more difficult first tries followed. I modified the rear frame and rear suspension frame (to make room for the 2 exhaust mufflers) Modified the rear drum-brake into disc-brake, I made an adapter on my own lathe where the disc would be mounted, and after that the mounting bracket for the caliper. I installed a rearset, internally lowered the front forks and so on..
I really liked the original speedometers, and the original sidepanels with new grey/gold Shadow logo’s. So I kept those original parts, the few things to recognize it’s a Honda Shadow.

After completely customizing the bike, I started to take it apart and repainted every part on the bike! All the sandblasting and painting is done by myself, except for the gloss paint on the tank and rear. Those are a really nice dark blue with matt black lines and Honda wings painted on it.

Throughout the whole bike building process I filmed everything and post video’s on:

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The bike handling is much better than I originally thought it would be. Because I increased the rear and lowered the front, the center of gravity shifted forward, which I like more than the original chopper handling.