Stone-cold killer: A Honda CL250 café racer with 3D-printed bodywork

For the last few years, the modern custom motorcycle scene has presented major OEMs with a whole new market in which to peddle their wares. We’re all familiar with the process; release a new motorcycle, run an in-brand customization contest with it, and show off the results at a major event. Lather, rinse, repeat.

These initiatives can produce predictably boring results. But they can also produce gems, like this honed Honda CL250 café racer from Turkey’s Bunker Custom Cycles.

The bike was created as part of, you guessed it, a European Honda customization contest. The brief was to customize a Honda CL500, but Bunker was given a concession to use its little brother, the Honda CL250, instead. Available only in Japan and Turkey, the CL250 closely resembles to the CL500, but trades the latter’s parallel-twin engine for a 249 cc single-cylinder mill.

Working with Honda Turkey, Bunker initially penned a design that would amplify the CL250’s neo-retro scrambler aesthetic. But Honda Turkey pushed back, reasoning that a bolder approach would have a bigger impact. After two months of back and forth, the parties settled on a modern café racer design instead.

“Our design approach was mainly to capture the style of racing bikes from the 60s to the 90s, when over-designing bikes wasn’t a thing” says Mert Uzer, who runs the Bunker workshop in Istanbul alongside his brother, Can. “The color scheme was also an extension of this era.”

21 renderings and 16 proposed color schemes later, Bunker was finally ready to bring their concept to life. “Our purpose was to relay the message that every design approach is possible with the CL250 platform,” Mert explains. “Even this kind of drastic change is possible.”

Looking to make their design easy to reproduce, Mert and Can opted to rely on 3D printing for the CL250’s new body kit; a departure from their usual process of making molds and hammering aluminum. “For body parts,” says Mert, “traditional manufacturing is a meticulous process, involving designing, planning, technical drawing, wooden model making, aluminum panel beating, mounting, and so on.”

“With analog methods like these, there’s no room for error—there’s no ‘CTRL-Z.’ When an error happens months of hard work can be wasted. But with digital methods, you can fail and try again, virtually.”

Finding the right material to print the parts out of was Bunker’s biggest challenge. After a few trial runs, they settled on a glass fiber-reinforced nylon, which they used to manufacture the Honda CL250’s new fairing, belly pan, seat pan, and tail cowl. For the fuel tank, they hacked up the OEM reservoir and used its bottom section as the foundation for a new 3D-printed cover.

Bunker re-housed the CL250’s LED headlight internals in the front of the fairing, then turned their attention to the taillight. It’s a bespoke piece that uses a combination of 3D-printed and hand-shaped polycarbonate bits, with an LED strip that includes integrated turn signals.

The bike’s wheels and forks come from a Honda CB250R and reportedly took some doing to fit. Bunker had to fabricate brake caliper adaptors and a new ABS sensor ring, and had to modify the stock top and bottom yokes. A new set of Öhlins shocks prop up the rear.

The contest’s rule prohibited any engine mods—but said nothing about modifying the exhaust. So Bunker took the stock headers and massaged them until the catalytic convertor was tucked away inside the new belly pan, with layers of kevlar fabric to keep the heat from damaging the bodywork. Gasses exit via a handmade muffler that pokes out the side of the belly pan.

Honda picked this year’s Wheels and Waves festival to show off the entries into their CL custom contest. Unsurprisingly, Bunker’s lithe CL250 café racer took home the gold. “Being a part of this competition and getting global recognition is definitely a plus,” says Mert, “but winning is something else.”

“As you can imagine, being a custom builder is a really isolated endeavor. While we are building these bikes we are quite confident and happy with the way we do things—but winning is proof that we are at least right about some aspects.”

Bunker Custom Cycles | Facebook | Instagram | Images by Kerem Albayrak