Baller On A Budget : Build A Custom Bike For $3000!

The bike we chose to rescue from certain death was a 2005 Honda CBR600RR. It's a popular model amongst new riders, but that also means it tends to suffer a lot of "lessons" learned by newbie owners. You know, silly things like a kickstand sinking in blacktop, too much front brake over a wet manhole cover and the numerous other irritations that can cause a bike to look (and feel) much older than its age.

Our hapless Honda was clearly the victim of an inexperienced rider, but it wasn't beyond rescuing from the grave. Some slightly cracked but heavily rashed bodywork, bent bar ends, tweaked rearsets and a wasted chain were some of the immediately obvious maladies, but nothing that couldn't easily be refreshed or replaced.

The most obvious upgrade (and also the costliest) was the custom bodywork wrap, done by Thin Air Concepts. With an astonishingly quick turnaround time we were only without the plastic for a week--which coincidentally allowed us a pleasant pace to install the rest of the mods. Aside from the wrap job the entire build could easily be buttoned up in a day.

We let Thin Air go to town with the design with some very basic requests on our end--and it came out perfect.

Just five days after shipping the bodywork out we had it back and ready to be installed. But why wrap instead of custom paint? It's simple--beat up bodywork. Plastics that are rashed and cracked can't hide behind paint, but are more easily concealed with a graphics wrap.

With the rockin' new wrap locked and loaded it was time to improve the performance, but we had a couple quick, easy and inexpensive dress up bits to do first. A V2 smoke screen from Lockhart Phillips fixed the previous cracked screen. And in typical garage gangster fashion the older screen was fastened with a hodgepodge of ill-fitting bolts and rivets, but a cool and visually appealing solution came with some spiked bolts from Sixty61. The same firm supplied matching bar ends as well to add a little extra attitude. Replacing the rashed mirrors was affordable and easy with a set of D2Moto units.

Roaring Toyz supplied our favorite crossover part that combined equal parts flash and performance. Though a gas cap might not seem like a performance part, this quick release unit makes keyless refills quick and easy so it gets the nod.