Two friends and their ultimate homage to the iconic Yamaha single

This Yamaha SR400 cafe racer finds its roots in a conversation between Nuno Capêlo and Ricardo Santos when they were travelling together to exhibit their latest builds at London’s BikeShed in 2016 event. That very year, Yamaha of Portugal had launched a challenge to customise the Yamaha SR400 as a farewell homage to the iconic model that had been launched in 1978. Nuno Capêlo is a motorcycle designer and owner of Capêlo’s Garage, while Ricardo Santos is the founder of Elemental Rides, a custom motorcycle workshop he started after quitting his job as a chef. The two realised that they had been friends for years, but never had the chance to work together, and thus decided to take on the challenge of building a unique custom Yamaha SR400. They soon zeroed in on a common ground that was to build a neo-retro cafe racer that would be a mix of both of their personal styles – an engineering approach from Ricardo’s side that would also address the technical bits while Nuno would focus on the clean minimalistic form of their custom machine. That said, both of them out agree on a common cause which was to make the motorcycle as fast and as usable on the road without tampering the stock capabilities of the iconic single cylinder Yamaha.

Nuno and Ricardo presented their project but unfortunately, the challenge didn’t go forward and was cancelled. Despite this setback, the guys at Yamaha Portugal loved the design so much they decided to back them up on the build and delivered them a brand new, fuel-injected, kick-started, classic Yamaha SR400 by the end of 2016. The duo ended up designing and building together in Ricardo’s garage with very little resources, trying to do all the work themselves and outsourcing as little as possible.

The Yamaha SR400 was completed with upgraded upside down front forks that came from a Yamaha YZF R1 with K-Tech internals, while the rear swingarm was braced and complemented with a customized pair of Showa Piggyback units. Both wheels went from 18 to 17-inches with much wider Michelin rubber. The original single disc brake unit was replaced by a 260mm drum from a Yamaha TR3. Together with the original rear brake and the clutch, all the cables were replaced by a customized fully hydraulic system. This helped to boost up the power and feel also reducing the need for maintenance.