Our First Collab with Honda
We are really glad that we had the opportunity to work with Honda Motorcycles. We are really thankful to Honda TR to took the step to work with us. The cafe racer look was a result of 2 months of design work back and forth with Honda TR.
At the beginning we were going for a scrambler look. We were really hyped about that direction also . Our main purpose was actually building a bike so that potential customers would also dream and act upon that same drive and dream about having their own CL 250 and modifying their own bike. So we remembered this fact and revisited our initial concept designs. Went back to the drawing board and went to the cafe racer direction. This direction came mainly from Honda TR. They said “If we are building a dream bike we have to have a bolder approach”
Our design approach was mainly capture style of racing bikes from 60-90 era. When over design wasn't a thing :). Color was also extension of this era. You can see all the Scrambler and Cafe racer verions in Form and Posture directory. And also you can find all the livery alternatives in Color directiory. S
crambler concept that we’ve came up with were also quite exciting but they were sharing the same blood with the original CL 250. So we went with Cafe Racer look.
Our purpose was to relay the message that every design approach is possible with CL 250 platfrom. Even this kind of drastic change is possible. And what better way to make people feel that they can build their own than go bold and at the same time use techniques like 3D printing that is entering houses all over the world.
It was also a nice challenge for us too. Normally we use techniques like mold making, aluminum panel beating. This time we didn’t use any of those techniques. We manufactured all of the body panels only using 3D printing. What better way to showcase this attitude than making Cafe fairing by 3D printing
For body parts traditional manufacturing is a meticulous process following designing, planning, technical drawing, wooden model making, aluminum panel beating, mounting and so on. With analogous methods like these there’s no room for error. There’s no ctrl+z :). When an error happens month of hard work can be wasted. But with digital methods you can fail and try virtually. The whole world is going in this direction. And we believe in the following years we’ll see more of makers like us. People will be buying the technology from brands like Honda and build their style and custom functionality themselves.
The hardest part was finding the right 3D printing material. It had to be though and flexible, resistant to heat, paintable. After lots of trial and error we’ve found it.
The other hard part was swapping Cb250r parts and modifying it to fit CL250. We’ve swaped CL250’s front suspension, front and rear wheels with CB 250 Rs. Its a detailed and hard job with lots of reverse engineering tight tolerances. Including works like caliper adaptation, abs ring manufacturing, Top and bottom triple tree modification. At the rear we've also used a pair of Ohlins shock tailored its with the rider.
CL250 is sharing the same proven engine with CRF250. And Honda guideline was not to touch the engine. The only thing we did was to remove the chunky silencer. The whole exhaust assembly is tucked inside the belly pan. Tucking and isolating the CL's original catalytic converter inside belly pan was a challenge but pulled trough and manage to isolate the heat accumulated in the catalytic protecting our plastic body-parts heat reflecting kevlar fabrics.
The part that we are most proud of is how we found the right insight to move potential customers and dream about building their own dream bike. Normally owning or making a custom bike also means a garage or workshop with lots of special tools. 3D printing bypasses lots of analogous mechanical and technical problems. We truely believe that this is the future that we are moving towards. With current manufacturing developments in 3D printing more and more people will unlock their maker potential.
Being a part of this competition and getting global recognition is definitely a plus. But winning is something else. As you can imagine being a builder like us is kind of a really isolated endeavor. While we are building these bikes we are quite confident and happy with the way we do things and how we do it. But winning is like a proof that we are right about some aspects of it :).
But above all having to work with Honda is reward for itself. At the end of the day we are building this interpretation on the existing CL 250 platform which is the output of 70 plus years of engineering legacy.