Oh boy, what did I get myself into. OK. Deep breaths. This is my first build. A recent fascination with the cafe racer-styled bikes got me fawning and obsessing over pics from various blogs, forums and videos like
. Call it a fad/fashion whatever, I knew I had to get into it and I figured how difficult could it be to build this in my apartment/garage? Sure, I've ridden on the back of a couple of motorcycles long ago but so what if I don't know how to ride/operate one. Oh yeah, so I'm a total newb to motorcycles. In fact, for the longest time I've been against them for whatever reason - probably thought they're too unsafe or whatever. Yeah, whatever. I do have a hand at machining, fabricating and fixing things - I've worked a number of years in the special effects industry for movies - so those skills I hope will come in handy. We shall see.
I purchased this partial basket case 1977 CB550F from a guy in Norco, CA (one of the armpits of SoCal) for 600 bucks. The guy responded to a Craigslist want ad I placed for this specific year/model (significant 'cos it's my birth year, eh hem). He told me he put his back out in a work-related injury and couldn't complete the build and hence threw all the incomplete parts, well, into a basket. It appeared that the bike sat covered for a while outdoors yet had been found in a tool shed some time before then. The odometer reads 26k miles. I have a feeling those are original miles.
Considering the bike is as old as me, it looks like it's in semi-decent condition. The carbs were off so couldn't test to see if it ran. So yeah, the tank and the carbs were off (some of the basket items). The tires were flat so it was a beast for me to load it up and then off the truck all by myself; the PO had put his back out so he couldn't help me. When I came home, tear down began immediately and it was pretty much down to the frame and motor in a matter of a few hours:
See I've designated a corner of my apartment already for parts I don't know what I'm going to do with - probably eBay/Craigslist them. Oh, btw, I've temporarily nicknamed this bike, "IDK" pretty much 'cos I Don't Know what the F I'm doing. But what I realize is that I need to give this bike a complete scrub down and maybe even replace some parts along the way. We'll see how it goes...
I admit that I'm currently about five months into my build - it's my first post and I'm back-logging here. Been meaning to post as I work but just found myself so immersed in the bike and screwing up and making trips to Home Depot and Harbor Freight... Just gets so busy. So this may all seem like I'm working in warp speed (for a novice) but really, this is going slow over the course of the last few months since my purchase back in June of this year (2012).
I've had to extract a bunch of the screws because 1) they were stuck, and 2) I don't have the right size Philips screwdriver. I do love my GrabIt Pro tool though! I fully endorse and adore this product.
Whittling it down...
I was struggling a bit trying to get the swing arm off. Lots of head scratching and moving the part around. I realized then that sometimes you gotta bang on things pretty hard to get things off a 30+ year old bike.
Engine removal time! Picked this trick up from a number of you here in the forums
Thank you.
Voila!
Let's begin to peel back the engine, shall we... (gulp)
Doh! Cam chain tensioner bolt kept spinning and the nut was pretty much seized onto the stupid Philips head bolt. Btw, why in the friggin hell are a lot of these screws Philips? Sheesh. I'm ordering myself a stainless socket bolt set. Screw this. Anyway, I was in a rut so I had to Dremel a slot for a flathead to get the darn bolt out and pretty much replace the entire part because the bolt is a special piece... Oh well.
Cylinder head and pistons look a bit #$%*e. Say, why don't we soak them overnight in some Simple Green... Bad idea.
So as many of you know, Simple Green is a great cleaner/degreaser. It works well on most metals but don't do what I did and leave aluminum parts to soak in the liquid for too long (eh hem, a few days) or it will corrode the part.
Time to get the valves and the springs out without a proper valve compression tool. Going ghetto with a C-clamp and a PVC pipe fitting. Whoops, I shot a couple of valve keepers out the window. Where'd they go?
What the heck does this do?
And this...
Man, what a mess.
Cafe Buffet
Oh balls!
I'll be replacing those with some All Balls tapered bearings 'cos that seems to be the thing to do these days
Had a real rough time drifting out the lower bearing race. In fact, I gouged out a good portion of the inner wall as I tried to forcefully bang the race out with a dowel and a hammer. Basically, I wasn't banging evenly and the race began to gouge into the inside wall of the tube... Frack. What can I do? Can I ground/hone it down and allow the new tapered bearing race sheath it? I hope I don't have to get a whole new frame for this dumb mishap. Crap. Lesson learned - haste does make waste, folks.
Dude, not cool. Right? What to do?
Anyway, we'll get back to this later. Meanwhile, I've got the frame to de-tab.
I got the tires off the wheels and part of the hardware on both front and rear... I can make a career out of working the wheels but I won't. I think I'll let someone else work these because I don't have the right tools nor the wits to take these apart. Again, we'll address the wheels later when I get to it. Focus right now is the engine and then the frame.
Onto the crankcase. Whoa. Been stumbling on this one for a while, probably a week to be exact. I couldn't figure out how to split the case after taking the sides off. Then, alas, I found one lone screw, Philips no less, on the bottom of the crankcase that was holding the whole thing together. Let's not lose this screw, huh? Anyway, crankcase is apart and now it's time to get dirty!
What the hell am I doing? IDK. Nevertheless, I think I'm getting somewhere. My garage and apartment feel like a junk yard and the incense masks the stench of WD-40 and Simple Green fairly well.
Gutted. Time to clean and soda blast the exterior followed by a warm rinse and power wash. Get this baby ready for paint. Oh joy!
Been ordering a bunch of parts along the way:
Quite impressed with
Dime City Cycles. Excellent packing and quick shipping. Also quite like
http://www.hdlparts.com for ordering a bunch of the nitpicky OEM seals, bearings, clips and other parts. They also have the cool parts diagrams and such. Check it.
Anyway, so where were we? OK, so which brings us to the here and now. I've got the empty crankcase and I soda blasted/power washed it so now I need to mask it off for paint. I'm using Rustoleum Specialty High Heat (rated at 1200�F) - there's a picture of a gas grill on the can so hopefully they're serious when they say this stuff can take the heat. Not sure if I need to bake these parts as I've seen demonstrated in the forums here but I'm sure I'll find the info. So I think this gets me up to speed with where I'm at on this build. Lots of work done yet so much more ahead. It's slow going but this is becoming a good life lesson on time management, budget, patience, trouble-shooting, resourcefulness... Learning a lot and I'm grateful for it. It's sometimes frustrating and exciting but trying to take it day by day. I can almost taste the exhaust.
