Ace Cafe Racer: Little miss dynamite

When British custom specialist, Nick Gale, was invited to US engine manufacturer S&S’s 50th anniversary, he knew he had to bring a slice of Brit biking heritage.

Gale wanted to show the British take on sport customs, created by the likes of Roland Sands and Jesse Rooke, leaders in the trade made famous the world over by TV shows such as Discovery Channel’s Biker Build-Off.

These guys build the gnarliest, sportiest custom bikes on the planet. Gale planned to join them — but, instead of building a California-style 21st century custom superbike, he decided to do it the British way, with the Ace Café Racer: “I saw little point in trying to out-radicalise Roland,” says Gale. “I realised I could easily come unstuck. So I needed to raise my game in a different way and do my own thing, which is why I chose the Café Racer. And by the way, 2008 was the Ace Café’s 70th birthday, so it was candles all round and more cause for celebration, after Mark Wilsmore and George Tsuchnikas, the owners of the revived Ace Café, agreed to let me build the bike with the Ace name and hallowed badge attached to it.” Triton tested

Having taken the decision to build the Ace Café Racer, Gale decided it should have the characteristics of the Triton, the archetype Sixties café racer, with a twin-cylinder Triumph engine in a Norton Featherbed frame.

Gale started the project with a stock S&S air-cooled dry-sump motor, in this case the Wisconsin engine specialist’s 1,650cc — not a Sportster clone of Harley’s pushrod 45-degree V-twin. The result is more power: 138bhp at the rear wheel, at 5,200rpm, and 156Nm of torque at just 4,250rpm. This meaty motor is mated to a six-speed gearbox, with a belt primary drive.

The wheels were designed around this power-up package and Gale used neo-retro 50-spoke Fat Daddy wire-laced 18in rims, shod with Metzeler Marathon rubber.

The suspension is equally at ease, with 43mm Öhlins upside-down forks, gripped in specially made Harris Performance triple-clamps, with brake and clutch hydraulic master cylinders cleverly concealed inside the upper fork yoke. These forks are matched to twin shocks at the rear, which were originally developed for a Z1000 Kawasaki. Gale used 100mm spacers to raise the ride height, resulting in a 51:49 forward weight bias to help the front 120/70ZR18 Metzeler grip the tarmac.

With a traditionally styled tubular steel swingarm, the 1,445mm wheelbase is rational by custom bike standards, with a 29-degree rake angle for those fully adjustable forks, which deliver 120mm of travel.

Metal heads

The sign off is the custom-built asymmetric PowerPro stainless steel exhaust complete with end cans right off the racetrack. Meanwhile, other accoutrements, such as the seat and the Manx Norton fuel tank, were also custom built. The race-style seat was hand-beaten by Williams out of sheet aluminium, then bead-blasted, like the tank, for a uniform finish. It fuses the rear lights countersunk into the metal, a further example of the minimalist mindset governing the Café Racer’s construction, resulting in a claimed 198kg dry weight.
It’s easy to understand why a modern Ace Café Racer had to have these components. The result is a brawny, beefy, butch-looking bike, displaying serious attitude. And, if you are ready to shell out the equivalent of £25,000 (about Dh131,000), Nick Gale could offer you customer copies of the Ace Café Racer.

It’s an investment that would stand out for originality, while delivering outstanding performance and handling.