Custom Street 750 Cafe Racer from Montana
This thoroughly re-engineered and re-imagined Street 750 blends cafe racer style with unmistakable Harley DNA.
There’s not a lot to do in Philipsburg, Montana. Nestled in the heart of big sky country, it was once the center of a booming mining industry. With the mines long since closed, Philipsburg, surrounded by a couple dozen ghost towns hangs on with a population under one thousand.
So how do you pass the time? If you’re Colin Cornberg, you build custom motorcycles. Cornberg started Number 8 Wire Motorcycles to bring his creative vision to life in metal, plastic, and rubber. We found this build featured on Maxim Magazine’s website.
He builds a wide variety of machines, from Hondas to BMWs to Harley-Davidsons. Despite extensive modifications, the bike retain the important aspects of their original character, and even the most extreme of his builds maintain a quaint, classic, timeless charm.
Like all of Number 8 Wire’s builds, this Street 750 has an emphasis on minimalism and purity of form. Still, it maintains that distinctively chunky, stocky Harley-Davidson look. Despite the incredible re-engineering of the rear swingarm and suspension —which we’ll get to in a moment — the most impressive piece of work is the tank.
On the Street 500 and Street 750, the gas tank doubles as a shroud to hide the substantial fuel pump and associated hardware from view. Obviously, exposing the pump and wiring to the world would defeat the minimalist, uncluttered aim of the bike, so a cafe tank was carefully formed. Cornberg balanced attractive looks with utility – the tank still has a respectable capacity, while still hiding the necessary components and looking great doing it.
The rear suspension and subframe were redesigned, ditching the twin shocks in favor of a cleaner, single-shock setup from a Ducati. While those twin shocks are a staple of Harley design, we have to admit that the monoshock not only looks better, but probably handles better as well.
Up front, a custom triple clamp allows the bike to run a Suzuki GSX-R front fork and brakes, meaning that this bike will turn and stop better than nearly anything else wearing the bar & shield logo. Far from a catalog build, numerous other components, such as the coolant lines, fender braces, headlight bracket, and bars were all custom made by Cornberg. The result is a machine that echoes the best design features of a Harley-Davidson, with a soul made up of equal parts Milwaukee and Number 8 Wire Motorcycles.
