Cobra Custom Honda Rs750 Flat-Tracker

COBRA CUSTOM HONDA RS750 FLAT-TRACKER

Imitation is the sincerest form of flat-trackery

JOHN BURNS

WHEN HONDA WANTS A “CONCEPT BIKE” BUILT, OR A “PROJECT bike” or whatever you want to call them, it doesn’t Google “custom motorcycle builders” and commence dialing from the hip. Oh, no. Even when it’s going through a rough patch, Honda has a certain standard to uphold. In fact, holding that standard up may be even more important when everything else is down, including sales, morale, exciting new products... That’s the time when the movers and shakers at Big Red fire up the Bat Light and shine it into the night sky, only it’s not the Caped Crusader they’re summoning, it’s the Cobra Engineering Special Projects Division. Along with Ken Boyko, that division more or less consists of one Denny Berg and the support staff that has the good sense to stand back and leavehim the hell alone to get on with it in his Palm Springs shop/Bat Cave.

When the Cobra crew rode ’round to CW HQ, Cobra CEO Boyko was on the custom Tracker, PR guy Camron Bussard rode the concept Scrambler and Berg was on a like-new 30-year-old Yamaha SR500 he picked up for $600, bone-stock save for a swell vintage Lockhart luggage rack DB found in his rafters. No tattoos, no big hair, no piercings, no attitude. Berg lets his work do the talking, though he’s a pretty good talker, too.

The reason for the visit was the bike Honda should’ve built when it built the new Shadow RS last year. Sure, the 2011 model has optional red/white/ blue paint, but it falls well short of the Bubba Shobert/Ricky Graham flat-track replica-looking thing you’re eyeing here, complete with 19-inch wheels, dirt-track tires, a pair of projector-beam headlights semi-concealed in a front numberplate and a big K&N air filter sticking out of the right side—mated to the RS’s fuel-injection unit via a hunk of washing-machine hose. Motorcycles took Berg off the farm, but they’ll never take the farm out of him. Anyway, the hose looks like a factory Honda installation. So does everything else on the bike. Farmers, turns out, are clever.

You think orthopedists and heart surgeons are overpaid until you see what they do. When Berg took delivery of the perfectly fine (if inoperably bland) stock RS, he put it on the stand, picked up the Sawzall and lopped off everything aft of the swingarm pivot. (With an approved sketch and a deadline, he already knew what he had to do.)

“The guys at M3 Racing in Minnesota [who restored the Bubba race bike that resides in the Barber Museum] had the molds for the original RS750 race seat and gave me the paint codes to the original colors,” says Berg, who entrusted Lead Sleds Customs in Orange, California, with applying the patriotic paint. “I fabbed up the front numberplate/headlight, radiator air dam and catch tank, foot controls and all the other custom parts. I used as many stock parts as possible, modifying them if necessary.”

One example of that is the stock fuel pump. It needed to go somewhere to make room for the one-off hand-built exhaust. Previously, that pump was tucked somewhere out of sight; now, it’s attached to the right side of the frame, where it looks like some sort of high-tech dry-sump oiling system. (Why no steelbraided lines, Berg?) Jettisoning things was also key, including the chromed plastic valve covers, footpeg brackets, etc. All the little things take time: faux magnesium paint on the engine covers,

turned lower fork legs wearing genuine HRC plastic fork-tube protectors, beadblasted controls and reservoirs... With the new M3 tailsection molded and painted, it was a simple matter (for Berg) to bend up a new

subframe to hold it. “I used the stock gas tank but removed the welded seam and added a flush-mount gas cap to make it look like a fiberglass rac-

ing tank.” Gee, Denny, what kind of advanced metalworking technique do you use to remove that hideous gas tank seam, anyway? Bondo! The seam’s not really removed so much as “filled.” Either way, it no longer exists.

The genuine Bubba Shobert article used a single-shock rear end, hence the radical ffamectomy. Berg went with a custommade Progressive Suspension shock bolted to the stock swingarm, modified, braced and painted just the right shade of red. Nineteen-inch Sun rims wearing Dunlop flat-track rubber are laced to lightened stock hubs, with the stock brake up

front (also lightened) instead of the authentic no-brake-at-all. The back end of the bike is raised 1.5 inches and the front dropped an inch to steepen the head angle, with Drag Specialties Flat Track bars proffering the grips in just the

right spot.

The most time-consuming part of the build would be those two glass-packed, ceramic-coated handmade exhaust pipes,

which emit just enough decibels to let you know you’re riding something special— without drawing too much attention to the fact that, sadly, even after all these years, nobody really makes any performance parts for the

Shadow’s 745cc V-Twin (though Cobra’s own FÍ2000R controller tunes the FI to work with the K&N intake and custom exhaust). So, while you might look like you’re fixing to roost the Springfield Mile, you’re really better equipped to hit the Springfield Mall. But it’s the thought that counts, and you’ll look damn good backin’ ’er into the parking lot. □

“When Berg took delivery of the perfectly fine (if inoperably bland) stock RS, he put it on the stand, picked up the Sawzall and lopped off everything aft of the swingarm pivot.”