Mid Life Cycles have won the 2012 JUST BIKES Bike Build Off with their custom Honda Café Racer. In their first crack at the JUST BIKES Bike Build Off, Mid Life were up against the returning team of Raider Motorsport from Coffs Harbour, NSW.

Both teams’ creations, while featuring café racer elements, were very different machines. Mid Life Cycles built a more traditional café racer around a 1960s-era Honda CB77 twin, while Raider Motorsport featured a 4-cylinder Yamaha FJ1100 engine in a rare ‘Rau’ frame and a more race-style appearance.

Over the three days of the Expo at the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre, visitors were asked to vote for their favourite - as the teams built the bikes in-situ - by lodging an entry in the voting boxes.

Voting was keen throughout the Expo, especially as both bikes neared completion on the Saturday, allowing visitors to see the ideas and custom touches that individualised each machine.

By mid Sunday afternoon, the voting closed, and the JUST BIKES team started counting the hundreds of entries submitted. As an additional impetus for Expo visitors to vote, five entries were to be selected for a free 12 month subscription to JUST BIKES.

At the end of counting, the winner, by a reasonable margin, was Mid Life Cycles. In accepting the JUST BIKES Bike Build Off trophy for 2012, a clearly-pleased Michael Catchpole thanked those that voted, JUST BIKES, the Expo,  and the team at Raider Motorsport for the contest.

Look out for a full feature on this bike and the JUST BIKES Bike Build Off 2012 in the January 2013 issue of JUST BIKES magazine.