Diamonds in the Rough: Turning dogs into classics

Reader Contribution by Richard Backus
Published on March 27, 2012
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Payback: Dime City Cycle’s custom café was built from an unlikely platform; a 1988 Honda VT800 Shadow.

As classic customs – everything from café racers to bobbers – continue gaining in popularity, practitioners of the art of customizing increasingly face a basic question: Do I keep doing the same old same old, or reach out and try to redefine the custom market? There will always be plenty of builders who take the first approach; fortunately, there are also more than a few willing to follow the path less traveled.

A lot of builders, tired of doing the same old build over and over, are reaching out and getting seriously creative. The bikes they’re building still fall into the general café/custom/bobber categories, but they’re very different from what we’ve grown used to. So what makes them different? They’re mostly dogs that have been turned into beauties.

A perfect example is the Dime City Shadow 800, a bike the guys at Dime City Cycles call “a Dunstall-styled street custom.” Although it pushes the café theme in directions purists might not like – long wheelbases are usually reserved for cruisers, tourers or choppers, not café racers – it’s an intriguing and very creative example of what can be done with bikes many of us would usually walk right by.

Peashooter pipes are a nice touch, as is the Dunstall tank.

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