With 154 horses on tap and impeccable handling, the Honda CBR954RR Fireblade is a prime candidate for customization?if you’re building an off-the-wall street fighter. But if your proclivities lean towards cafe racers, you’ll have your work cut out for you.
Wenley Andrews will attest to that. He first started thinking about a CBR project eight years ago: ?I was really into street fighters,? he says. ?I even had the custom parts made, without a donor bike. The whole build was being put together in my mind and on paper.?

Then Wenley bought a Triumph Bonneville, customized it, and launched his own business. The bike appeared on these pages, and the new wave café racer scene sunk its teeth into him good and proper.
But Wenley?s passion for street fighters has never left him. So last year he picked up a low mileage, 2004-model CBR954RR, and resolved to blend his original ideas with his newly refined tastes.
You’re looking at the result: a gnarly ?retro-fighter? that Wenley calles The Angry Bird.
?I gathered up the parts from all those years ago, from under my parents’ house,? says Wenley, ?and brushed off the cobwebs. They were as good as new!?

Some of those parts included the front-end and swing arm from a Honda VFR. The wheel rim was widened to take a 180-section tire, and the forks set further apart with custom-machined CNC triples. ?It took lots of fiddling around to get the spacers and axle to fit such a huge front tire,? he admits.
ThereR...