Honda Rebel to a Bobber?

It’s your bike do what ever you like but those are really low end machines that might not have much resale value anyway and all the money in the world you put into it will be lost. Not to mention any warrantee issues you might create. Seems to me you will be douching up a pretty nice commuter bike that is already cool looking.

American Motorcycle produces a bobber style and you can see pictures and specs here. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobber_(motorcycle)#History), a “bobber is a custom motorcycle that usually has had the front fender removed, the rear fender “bobbed” or made smaller, and all superfluous parts removed to make it lighter.”

This article about chopping a Rebel might be of interest. But it looks to me like at a minimum, you take off the front wheel fender and then find a shortened back wheel fender. You’ll get a Rebel like this. It looks like you take off all the mirrors and crap on the handlebars. You need to find a shortened seat. You take off anything cosmetic or frilly, so you can get to that stripped down look. Obviously, you can not take off anything necessary for function or legally mandated safety features. Unless you don’t plan to run it on the road.

Or you make one of these, a MotoPicker and they are making a few of these.

The point of a bobber is to take off as much of it as possible.

So just take off anything that isn’t required for safety (like don’t take off the brakes, as an obvious example) and you should be GTG.

Anything plastic can either be unbolted and/or shaved off… look at the Harley Nightster for some inspiration. The Nightster’s design was inspired by the bobbers of back when. Notice the fairings (SP?) are shaved down, and there isn’t much on it that doesn’t need to be.