Bike styles explained

The world of custom bikes

The world of custom bikes is a very diverse place, there are many different types of custom bikes, i have chosen a selection of some of the most common types and written a small description on each.

· Factory Custom

· Streetfighter

· Chop (Hard tail/ Soft tail)

· Rat

· Low Rider

· Café Racer

In this article I will attempt to distinguish between the different types of custom bike for anyone who may not be quite sure of the differences.

This article is my own opinion and should not be taken as gospel, I do not claim to be any sort of expert and If any part of this article is in your opinion wrong so be it.

Factory Custom

The factory custom dates back to the later part of the seventies or early eighties right up to today and is still very popular. Often modeled on a standard more street or commuter style model the Factory Custom usually has higher bars, cut down seat with a larger pillion seat. There are often changes to the frame making it slightly lower, the front end is given more forward rake and slightly longer forks. The suspension is softer and the fuel tank is often larger.

The Factory custom was very popular in America due to its comfort and bigger fuel tank capacity they were great for the longer distance haul. It is because of its popularity in America that you will find a lot of bikes that have been imported, usually identifiable by the amount of reflectors fitted.

The Streetfighter

The Streetfighter derives from when people started falling off sports bikes in the eighties when they first came out. The cost of repairing their machines was too much so they would do what ever had to be done to get the bike back on the road.

That usually meant straight bars to replace the bent clip-on's, removal of the damaged fairing, twin spot lights as the original light is usually fixed in the fairing (Twin spot lights were a must as at the time there were few after market lights that had high and low beam so you would need one spot for high and one for low), some after market indicators and a mini Speedo as the chances of the clock surviving are slim.

This look actually caught on and people started to buy damaged sports bikes to build streetfighter projects.

The Streetfighter of today can range from the simple twin head lights and straight bars to a lavishly altered machine with wild paint and thousands of pounds of modifications. It has adopted some standard features over the years as well, we have already mentioned the lights, bars, clocks and indicators but you could now add to the list a Kicked up rear end, single seat, single sided swing arm.

Now anything with twin lights, straight bars etc gets the tag of streetfighter, hence Streetfighter Style.

This is my GPZ750R crashed and bashed, i brought it with the plan to streetfighter it.

Here it is displaying the classic streetfighter styling.

Here are a couple of modern day streetfighters that have been built with no expense spared.

The Chop

The Chop has a long history that started in the late sixties early seventies. The chop has long been viewed as the more hard core bikers choice of machine. The chop is popular as a world wide style, they are still popular in the biking scene now.
The chop has a custom built frame often home made although now there are many bike builders that build chops for a living. The chop is designed to be minimalist losing most of the the bits that most bikes have and just keeping the parts that are essential to make the bike run and legal.

They are usually quite extreme in their design with high bars some times referred to as Ape bars, the frame is often quite long and low with an extreme rake on the front and extended forks. The chop can be either a hard tail or a soft tail, hard tail being a ridged frame with no suspension, soft tail having a form of suspension.

The Rat Bike

The name speaks for its self really, the rat bike is just that. The rattiest scruffiest blackest most grungy looking machine of the bike world. The rat bike is not make specific, any bike can become a rat bike with the owners influence.

The Low Rider

The Low Rider is a relatively new style, i can only give you my view on this style as i don't know too much about its roots. The Low Rider derives from a mix of chop and streetfighter all put together in a chop styled but very low frame. One low rider can look very different to the next, i think that there is a large amount of artistic license practiced here.

Cafe Racers

The cafe racer has roots that go back to the Fifties, the bikers of the day were the rockers. They used to meet in cafe's and race, often they would race from one cafe to another, hence the term Cafe Racer.
The cafe racer style was a standard road bike with clip-on handle bars that dropped sharply to allow the rider to tuck down on the tank, they had a single seat and a slopped rear seat cowl. They some times had a little screen to stop the wind and flies getting in the riders eyes when they were tucked down on the tank.

The Cafe Racer was used extensively on the race track and many road races like the Isle of Man TT in the fifties and sixties and they are still run in many hill climbs and classic race days.