Straight out of Brisbane, Australia: a custom Honda CBX750 by Ellaspede, with details inspired by the Ferrari Testarossa.
Despite its relatively short tenure, the Honda CBX750 remains one of the Japanese marque’s most interesting models. It stood out for its sports tourer vibe and modern (at the time) DOHC four-cylinder engine, which boasted fancy features like hydraulic valve adjusters. Its angular bodywork and jagged graphics were peak 1980s, and the 16” wheel that early models used was just plain weird.
The CBX750 isn’t as prolific on the custom scene as its cousin, the CB750, so whenever a prominent custom shop takes a crack at it, we take notice. And this Honda CBX750 café racer from Ellaspede in Brisbane, Australia, is sure worth noticing.
The irony is that Ellaspede never planned on customizing the CBX750. Their client, Colm, fresh from a visit to the BMW Museum in Munich, was set on ordering a custom BMW R100. But then he started seeing custom CBX750s pop up online, and the project pivoted.
Finding a suitable donor bike proved challenging, so Colm rolled the dice and bought a 1984 Honda CBX750F from Japan instead. With the bike on the water, Ellaspede started mapping out their approach.
“Some clients come to us with a meticulously prepared spreadsheet detailing exactly how they’d like their bike to look, while others begin with a much more open-ended brief,” says Ellaspede shop boss Leo Yip.
“Colm’s initial brief amounted to ‘Can you build me a bike that you’d own and ride yourself? My only request is that it needs twin square headlights like the original.’ From a client brief perspective, that’s pretty much music to our ears.”
Leo and his team started by throwing together an inspiration board of sorts, before putting pencil to paper to sketch out their ideas. It didn’t take long for clear themes to emerge…
“From very early in the mix we knew we wanted to lean on the CBX’s 1980s contemporaries as influences,” says Leo, “and nothing from that decade screams louder to us than the Ferrari Testarossa. The horizontal lines and rounded off surfaces of the Testarossa’s iconic tail were a must-have—a custom taillight that lit up in striped sections was a homage that we were hopeful we could pull off elegantly.”
“We also knew we’d be stripping the front cowl and body fairings off, which would leave the tank looking a bit off and out of place. We took this as an opportunity to add a bit of muscle to the body lines by designing some tank flares that would cover up the exposed fairing mounts, while also providing a background to mount some CNC-machined badges.”
“Continuing the injection of muscle, we designed some two-into-one CNC-machined manifolds to put a pair of beefy exposed air filters on display. We also knew we’d have a fair amount of electrical componentry to hide away—so, to keep all of this tucked out of view, we built in some side covers with heavy scallops to accommodate K&N filters.”
Another idea that popped up involved grafting a CBR1000R swingarm onto the bike, along with custom aero-disc wheel covers to give the bike an anime feel—but that concept never quite felt right. Ellaspede settled on a Ducati 1198 swinger instead, and then convinced their client to add lightweight BST carbon fiber wheels to the spec sheet. An Öhlins front end, originally meant for a BMW R nineT, was plucked from the Australian Öhlins importer’s leftovers to finish the rolling chassis.
“With our design plan quickly taking shape and a parts shelf turning into a menagerie of modern performance bits, we finally took delivery of the bike,” says Leo. “A quick blast around the block signaled that a few horses had left the paddock since it originally rolled out of the Honda factory back in 84. A bit of compression and leak testing confirmed our suspicions beyond any doubt.”
“We knew we couldn’t put a tired engine in this kind of a build, not after saving so much weight with those beautiful carbon wheels. So we shoehorned the engine out and sent it off to Stuart Firth of Firth Racing—a name known to anyone familiar with bikes going quick.”
Given the bike’s age, finding the right parts wasn’t particularly easy, so Ellaspede turned to their usual source—the Dutch parts specialist CMSNL. “The parts we’ve been able to source from them have saved bikes from permanent relegation to the back shed on countless occasions around here,” Leo adds. With CMSNL saving us the indignity of being laughed out of the local Honda parts department and Stuart working his magic on the donk, we got to work doing what we do best—making all of the bits that don’t exist yet.”
The heavy lifting started at the back, where Ellaspede hacked off the original subframe and engineered a new one that would take the bike from a twin- to single-shock setup. “At this point, we were able to earmark a future headache that would require rectifying,” says Leo, “as the front and rear sprockets were very reluctant to line up. We stuck a masking tape note on that one for our future selves, wished them luck, and escaped up to the front end of the bike.”
“Initial fitment of the front end confirmed our previous calculations that the new forks might throw the trail and rake out of whack. So, with geometry troubles at both ends and nowhere else to run, we measured and modeled a new neck that would get the CBX sitting pretty. Once that piece was in our hands, we sliced out the stock neck and welded in the replacement at the correct angle.”
With the chassis more or less sorted, Ellaspede could focus on the Honda’s new bodywork. Together with the finned taillight design they had planned, Leo visualized an open channel flowing through the back of the seat and tail—another Testarossa-inspired touch.
Ellaspede designed the entire tailpiece, including the taillight, using CAD software, before 3D-printing a prototype. After a little back and forth between the 3D printer and the bike, the design was refined and sent to a third-party to CNC-machine the required bits and pieces out of aluminum and polycarbonate. Similar techniques were used to create the fuel tank’s embellishments.
Once they had the rebuilt motor in hand, Ellaspede again turned to digital modeling and 3D printing to bring their air intake concept to life. After some trial and error, air was flowing efficiently, and the prototype intakes could be sent off to be CNC-machined out of aluminum. As is befitting a 1980s Honda, a four-into-one Yoshimura exhaust system was added to the mix.
Next, the whole bike was rewired with a full suite of Motogadget products, including a mo.unit controller, a digital dash, push buttons with color-coded LEDs, mirrors, and bar-end turn signals. To keep everything as tidy as possible, the crew cut a section out of the underside of the fuel tank to tuck the battery into.
By this stage, Leo was itching to test ride the bike—but the chain alignment was still an issue. Ellaspede solved the problem with a custom front sprocket carrier, simultaneously creating a fresh problem with the hydraulic clutch’s slave cylinder. Thankfully, it was easily rectified.
“Test riding time finally arrived,” says Leo, “and while there was still a bit of tuning to do, we were relieved to confirm that the particular combination of parts we’d selected was going to behave as we’d hoped.”
The last big ticket item on the list was the Honda’s headlight. “Being the only prerequisite Colm had flagged for us, we wanted to get it right,” Leo explains. “We considered salvaging the iconic original headlights—something that the builds that originally piqued our client’s interest achieved to great effect.”
“But with all of the modern additions we’d added, we wanted to try to put our own twist on the design and tie in the classic styling with the newer performance parts. The custom headlight housing drew a bit of inspiration from the Viewmaster, a toy invented well before the 80s, but undoubtedly prolific in the playrooms and toy boxes of that decade. We also took the opportunity to incorporate an ‘X’ motif, and upgraded the light source to LEDs.”
Ellaspede has a talent for sharp liveries—and the CBX750’s is one of the best they’ve delivered yet. It’s a combination of several concepts that they pitched to their client, with contrasting black and white sections punctuated by bright red details. The Honda wing motifs on the custom-made fork guards are particularly neat.
“With everything buttoned up and the final tune dialed in, there was nothing left to do but ride,” Leo concludes. “Colm has been enjoying becoming intimately familiar with his CBX locally for a while now, but the decision has been made for him and his family to head back to his hometown in Ireland.”
“Thankfully, he likes the bike enough that it’s going over with him!”
Ellaspede | Facebook | Instagram | Images by A.J. Moller
