If you love custom motorcycles and feed your addiction via social media, you probably follow Cafe Racers of Instagram. It?s an impeccably curated account with a staggering 850,000 followers, delivering quality images of café racers and customs several times a day.
The guys behind CROIG, David and Andrew, are much more than mere pixel pushers though: They?ve been getting their hands dirty building bikes, out of DIY workshop The Moto Collective, in Minneapolis. This heavily modified CB450 is the second outing under the croig.builds label, and there?s already a third on the way.

It?s an intriguing approach from guys who spend their working lives examining every kind of custom build under the sun. It’s most definitely not a cafe racer, and there are absolutely no fripperies or bling: CROIG?s CB450 is a bike stripped to the absolute basics, being a hybrid on-/off-roader with minimal bodywork. There isn?t even a tail section.
So what was the thinking behind that" ?I wanted to merge two styles of motorcycles from my youth that I?m nostalgic about,? Andrew tells us. ?There was a non-running CB450 sat next to my parents? garage, which planted the seed. Then when I reached 15, I saved enough money to get my own bike, a 1997 Kawasaki KX125.?

The idea was to turn a 1970s street classic into an off-road machine. The Honda straight twin offers a good mix of power and agility, and there happened to be a broken one tucked away in the corner of the garage?
Andrew de...