Ryca kits have been trashed lately with some people complaining about their problems. So I think it’s time to get some perspective and compare them to building a similar bike on your own.

First off, a lot of what you are paying for is the engineering. Ryca has changed the donor bike’s geometry to make it handle more like a sport bike than a laid-back cruiser. If you tried to do this on your own it would take a lot of trial and way too many errors. Supplying the correct rear wheel, plus dealing with the fork lowering and spacers makes life easier, and the build faster and cheaper by a huge margin.

To save you money, the kit creatively makes the most of what is already: there such as the  tank, sidestand, key switch, etc.

Problems are pre-solved for you. Consider how much time you would waste trying to figure out where to put the keyswitch, how to lower the tank, get rid of the decomp solenoid, where to put the battery...

One of the hardest parts of a build is gathering all the parts. Time and money is often wasted looking for just the right widget. On a ground-up build like this you can spend almost as much time searching sources on the net as wrenching.

The parts are organized. Everything comes in little packets with the quantity and name. There’s even a drawing in case you can’t read! A lot better than sifting through that box of odd nuts and bolts in your garage.

The videos are a huge help for the first time builder. Give a novice a pile of parts, say “now go make a seat,” and see how long it takes him to do it. The videos are like having an experienced friend come over and not do it for you, but put you in the right direction.  

The supplied jets for the carb and the instructions give you a good starting point for tuning. Do it yourself and you’ll start with almost no point of reference to begin with.

You begin the build with a coherent concept. Knowing exactly what the bike will look like is a huge advantage. Do it on your own and the novice will have, at best, a vague image in mind. The bike will start going together in one direction and then often wander off in another as the bike “evolves.” You’ll find yourself doing things two or three times to accommodate the never-ending changes. It’s a long expensive process and in the end you wind up with that signature look of an amateur build: A mix of features that don’t visually (and maybe mechanically) don’t work well together.

Think of the kit as a starting point, a solid foundation. Yes some things could have been done better, but Ryca had to balance cost with quality. The nice thing though is that you can now upgrade as you see fit, and in your own way.  

Yes, a lot of parts don’t fit together like a chair from IKEA. But this is mostly because the donor bikes are built to a price and it shows with varying dimensions and standards.

So, to anyone considering one of these kits, I’d say go to it. You’ll learn a lot, and it’s a cheap easy way to get a cool bike.  

There are a lot of guys who never imagined they could turn a Savage into a cafe style bike. There are a lot of guys who never imagined they'd even try it. And now there are a lot of guys who've done it, thanks to Ryan and Casey. I'm one of them.

Nothing but praise to the Ryca shop from me. My daughter and I put together a complete kit starting from 0 building experience and using only hand tools and a Dremel and angle grinder. It took about a solid week of work. It turned out to be a real looker. It's presently got a 4/5 rating on the Velocity Cafe Racer Viewers Bikes page (check out http://www.caferacertv.com/viewers-bikes/, row 12). We put 3000 very fun miles on it and would be doing more riding, but it's gotten to be winter in New England.

The kit is not perfect. What in life is? But the issues were not big ones and solutions were found. We could never have done this on our own. I can't imagine ever letting this bike go. It's simply too good for what it is.

T2 wrote on 12/09/11 at 09:58:21:




agreed. well said