Fitting a Cafe Racer Tail hoop

taking a stock subframe and adding a rear hoop has to be the most common mod in the cafe racer/scrambler/tracker universe. Often overlooked (I’m guilty too) is the rear wheel suspension travel issue. For information on other cafe racer parts, click here.

if you take a subframe that looks like this:

Reading: Cafe racer tail hoop

and add a straight tail hoop, you’ll have trouble with the first pothole or pothole you encounter. I’ve seen worn and blown tires as well as whole taillights torn off and broken, all on the first test ride. unless you get lucky and weld a straight rim and miraculously have no work to do because your suspension travel is still perfect, you have 2 options as far as I can see:

modify your suspension; adding longer bump stops, longer hits, increasing stiffness
be smart with your tail hoop mods; use a little hand to get both the look you want and the suspension performance you need.

in this article, I’ll discuss both, as well as the process for installing your own cafe racer tail ring.

1. modify your suspension:

in my opinion this should be your second choice, let me explain why. By modifying the suspension to accommodate less wheel travel, you are playing into something that greatly affects how your bike performs on the road.

shortening suspension travel with shock stops will cause you to bounce all over the seat on bumpy rides.
longer shocks at the rear will reduce lean angle and affect wake at the front.
increasing the stiffness enough can make your bike handle like a bathtub on the road.

It can be done, but keep in mind that each modification you make here will affect another area of your bike’s performance. one example i personally made was a gn250 encoder. Stock, the GN 250 has a fairly relaxed rake (lots of people build bobbers out of them), so you can afford to raise the rear a bit without getting into dangerous territory up front.

2. be smart with your tail hoop.

A little thought can go a long way here, I’ll explain the tricks I use to try and reduce the shock to the bike’s suspension travel, if not eliminate the shock of adding a tail hoop altogether. In general, I use 3 methods to avoid these problems

a) placing the rim beyond the apex point of the wheel, using suspension travel to your advantage.

Positioning the rear rim to the right can allow the wheel to ride up inside the frame, allowing for better suspension actuation. As shown below, this technique can be good when using a tail cover, but it’s not helpful when doing a snotty style seat. the sweet spot I found is half way between the axle and the rear of the rim, looks good and will leave enough room for the rim to come up a bit inside the rim before you worry about bottoming out. remember that your wheel moves radially, not up and down when you measure this and weld it.

b) sweep the hoop up at the rear, either by hand bending or by cutting and angle welding.

This tends to be my weapon of choice in brat-style seats. a good swept curve can really make the seat come out right. Having that upsweep on your cafe racer’s tail hoop allows for more travel for every mm you raise the rear end. In addition to sweeping the tail rim up, I’ll add a recess in the seat pan when laying down fiberglass to allow the wheel to ride up inside the frame while maintaining the straight line of the seat. the foam gets a little thinner, but no one sits there anyway!

c) don’t coil the tail at all! using the back cover to create the line you want, but allow the wheel to ride inside it.

I’ve never actually used this method, however I’ve seen it many times. have 2 straight frame rails or even leave the stock tail subframe and build the tail deck around that. This allows you to achieve the look you want without making any changes to your bike frame. allowing you to keep your original suspension travel and settings without worry!

assuming you’ve chosen to weld a tail ring (hopefully that’s why you’re reading) here’s how I do the fabrication/welding side.

cut the frame where you see fit first, be careful with the hanger brackets as they are often reinforced and will make mounting your slugs a bit more difficult. Once you’ve cut off your old tail, you’ll need to adjust your frame slugs. these can be solid round bars or thick-walled tubes that slide down into your existing frame and then into the new tail hoop. 80mm long is enough to get the job done.

then, tack weld the stub in place, slide in the new tail ring and drill a 6-8mm hole on each side of the welded joint, these will be used to “plug weld” the stub into place. place and add strength. sometimes I do one side and then seam the other plug is welded depending on the hoop (shown here). line up the tail hoop and hold it in place (magnets, tape, gum, whatever you have) and put the last few tack welds in place.

once that’s figured out, hit the town with your soldering iron. I start with the plug welds and leave the seam joint to the end. personal preference is up to you. finish it up again with your grinder or belt sander and there you have it, a new subframe to base your custom seat and/or rear deck on.