Building bikes is fun.: December 2012

Well its been awhile since my last post, and a lot has been going on. Moved to Boulder, Co... picked up a full time job, and moved in with a couple people from craigslist. Everything has been going pretty great, and I have been busy with all kinds of new projects. My most recent project will be the main focus of this post, and ill do a little photo dump to summarize what ive been up to.

I bought a CB1000 a couple weeks ago so I could flip it... long story short, I got it running well, but the cooling system was giving me some issues, and it didnt have a title... I got pretty unmotivated with it pretty quickly because sport bikes really are not my thing. I did get some manual mill time in for this project because I needed to make some new handlebar mounts for it. I ended up putting it on craigslist and sold it for over double what I bought it for.

I love having a Safari Van

Blocky and overkill!

Day I sold it.

So I sold it Wednesday before Thanksgiving. My brother, sister in-law and I were driving back to Iowa to see family, and on the way back home Steve and I spent close to the entire time looking of craigslist and other like sites. We ended up finding a 1982 cx500 for sale in Westminster and Steve was set on me buying it. It didnt really appeal to me because it was one ugly bike. He started showing me some picture of it modified, and I got pretty excited... Wrench Monkees built this one..

Money from the 1000 was burning a hole in my pocket so i jumped on it. Contacted him right away and arranged to buy it that night. It was titled, currently registered, complete and running for $600. What better of a deal could you ask for? I loaded it up into my van and couldnt wait to get home to tear it down.

This is what it pretty much looked like when I got it... except well used.

Did I mention I love having a van? This is the 5th motorcycle that ive picked up like this. I dont even have any pictures of the bike before I tore into it. Here is one with the rear chopped already and it starting to be stripped.

Some things that kind of sucked about the bike...everything was spray bombed flat black, and there was red over spray everywhere, the headlight didnt work, and it wasnt the bulb, lastly, it was crazy dirty. What can I expect for $600 though right?

I pulled the radiator so I could strip the paint off of it, the size of the fan kind of caught me by surprise!

Polished radiator. I love copper-brass!

Needed to re-wire and consolidate the wiring on the bike to hide it all. What a nightmare. The only wire schematic I could find online was for a '78, and they werent exactly the same.

What a mess

Steel seat pan

Here you can see the tray under the seat that holds all of the electronics. I Stripped the tank and added some moto bars also.

Overall look, I cant believe its come this far already

Welded on some nuts for mounting the new seatpan to the frame, padding is in the background

View from the back. Check out that awesome v-twin set up! Here you can see the tach mounted and the bike computer mounted in the center of the handle bars for speed and odometer. Clean.

Battery mount under the swing arm. This is a security system back up battery... its 8 lbs lighter than the stock one (No joke) and starts the bike just fine. And they are only $29.99. Score.

Under side of the electronics box. It came out way better than I thought. The regulator/rectifier, spark boxes, fuses, and all the weatherpack connectors are stuffed into a 1" deeptray under the seat.

First extended test. About 37 miles of success besides it not running the greatest because of no air filters. I did the tape trick to mimic filters and it ran great until the carbs ripped up the tape. Did a lot of dirt tracking...its was a ton of fun minus the whole bald street tire part.

Still waiting on a headlight mount so its kind of just hanging there with some zip ties. Here you can see my new foot pegs. Used G-Sport BMX pegs mounted right up!

Ignore the lame Harley bag under my seat but you need to carry tools some how! Instead of buying air filters, I made some velocity stacks out of Tecate cans and stuffed them with UNI pre-filter foam. Finally, the motor runs perfect with no hesitation!

Foam inside.

A buddy from work and I did a canyon cruise today and it was really beautiful out. It had to be close to 70 degrees. We left boulder and headed up Boulder Canyon towards Nederland. We hung out in Ned for a bit and drank some root beers. We then headed up towards Rollinsville and continued towards Timberline. This highway is crazy fun. Lots of long sweeping turns and switch backs up the mountain. I kept it pretty tame because of my tires and lack of fork brace, but I still let it hang out there a couple times and really had the bike leaned over. After Timberline we headed into Golden Gate park which is full of even more winding roads. So So so much fun. I cant wait to get some new tires! That road brought us into Golden, and thats where we parted ways to go home. I took 93 back and held it at a steady 65 mph with zero problems... until it started running like crap. I immediately expected it was my haggard airfilters and it was. At 65mph the carbs were sucking so much air it gobbled up one the pre filter discs. A dude stopped and helped me out, and thank god he had some needle nose pliers. I pulled most of the filter out was was riding again. As soon as I got home, I glued the filters in place so it wouldnt happen again. Whoops.

128 miles on the odometer just from this weekend. I bought it last Sunday. Its been fun.
As always, its a work in progress. Soon Ill have some big fat Firestone Deluxe Champions tires on it, and im sure there will be a couple more tweaks here and there. Stay tuned.