My little hobby shop, the Chattahoochee Skunkworks, is pleasantly tucked away in the foothills of north Georgia and I have a thing for the Honda CB400F. Although I’ve built several different bikes over the past few years, I always keep an eye out for stray, neglected CB400Fs to rescue. This 400 is the fifth one I’ve built and there is another one in the planning stages. It seems like these little light weight high revving bikes were designed for the twisty mountain roads in our neck of the woods.
One of the advantages of specializing in one model is you tend to end up with a pretty nice stash of leftover parts and this particular build was created from a lot of what I already had on hand. Leftovers are always better the second time around, right? The frame (given to me by a friend) was already cut and needed some attention so I added some reinforcing and trimmed off the additional tabs and unnecessary brackets before sending it to our friend Monte Turner for slick black powder coating. The engine came from another old bike that a buddy from South Carolina found for me. After a leak-down, compression test and the usual maintenance I was confident it would be fine without a rebuild. I picked up a set of alloy rims from Mikes XS and laced them to the stock hubs. A lot of the builds I’ve done in the past have been very close to stock, but I was really shooting for a “traditional” café racer look on this one so the fabrication list was pretty extensive. The dash panel, battery box, electrics tray, tail light/license bracket, under-seat pan, wiring harness, rear-set mounts and probably stuff I’m forgetting were whipped up right here in the shop.
The crew at Dime City supplied the cool 2.5” tach and speedo set, the headlight mounts, the mini horn, the sweet reverse cone muffler, the grips and the Dyna ignition setup. When you get to my (advanced) age you tend to pick honest, no bull parts suppliers that you can count on and Dime City is always at the top of that list. I’ve always been a big fan of the 60’s Lotus racing cars and I shot the British racing green, yellow striped paint job as a tribute to them.
So far I’ve put about 150 mountain road miles on the bike and it is an absolute blast to ride. In the tight twisties you just think about where you want it to go and it goes there. Not as much torque as the bigger displacement bikes, but you can always drop down a gear or two and find some power and that awesome formula one howl. Sadly, I can’t keep ‘em all and there is another one in the shop waiting so this fine example of a traditional café racer is currently for sale. Stay Cool, Toby
PARTS LIST
2.5" Chrome Mini Speedometer w/ White Face
2.5" Chrome Mini Tachometer w/ White Face- (1:7 Ratio)
Matte Black 17" Shorty Reverse Cone Megaphone Muffler
Ignition - DS1-1 - CB350 - CB400 fours - Dyna-S
Rim - H Type - 1.85x18 - Aluminum - 36 Spoke - XS650 - XS400
Rim - H Type - 2.15x18 - Aluminum - 36 Spoke - XS650 - XS400
Medium Weight Chrome Headlight Mounting Brackets - (Fits: 28-38mm Forks)
