Topic: JC's '75 cb550 cafe project

[gspatc]

      Hello all, I've been browsing this forum for a couple of weeks as a guest to "bone up" on some Honda knowledge.  I have been wanted a cafe racer for years, but one thing or another has always prevented it. I thought I was going to make the leap a couple of years ago, but reliability won out over vintage cool. During that time I have spent countless hours thinking about what I would do if I ever did buy an older bike. What would the theme be? Colors, style of tank/seat? Fat modern tires or normal size? You get the point. I have a pretty good idea of the basic design philosophy.
     Fast forward to the present and I've been without a bike for almost two years and I really started to get the itch again. For the past couple of months I've been perusing the local (St. Louis) craigslist ads just waiting for that "perfect" candidate and last Sunday I found it. A running 1975 Cb 550k for $750! I know that some people have found one for less, but I know a whole lot more people that have paid more too. 
     The next day I started ordering parts. (Man is it hard not to spend too much money!) I'm trying to keep this in the sub $2500 range. Entirely doable, but just replacing the tires and brakes alone starts to eat away at that. Maybe I shouldn't include them in my final total since they are maintenance items. Anyways I'll post a couple pics to get the ball rolling on my thread and I look forward to hearing from any of you that I'll meet along the way.
     I should also mention that I am buy NO means a master mechanic or master builder or anything, but I truly believe that the build is the fun part. I know I am going to make plenty of mistakes on this journey, but more than anything this is a chance to learn new skills and have some fun. Like they say on "The Red Green Show: 'If women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy'"      Now where is that duct tape!
     James
 
     

[gspatc]

Day 2: After I got her home I started in the process of partially tearing her down. I'm not going to pull the motor because the motor runs fine and I'm not going to powdercoat the frame. I didn't have much time to work on the bike,  but I used a whole bunch of purple power and high pressure water and brushes to knock the dirt off. I think it looks pretty good considering it's age.

[gspatc]

Day 3&4: I had heard that a stuck front caliper was not uncommon on a barn find and mine was no different. I'll be trying that workshop hero metal restore stuff and see how it does on that. Even though it was running I just don't trust 30 year old carbs that I know nothing about so off they came for a thorough checkup. Good thing too because one of the slow jets was completely blocked. You can see the carb on the left is significantly dirtier than the others. Other than that they were in surprisingly good shape.

[gspatc]

Day 5 (today): I said in my first post that part of the reason for me wanting to do this project was to learn how to do things that I have never done before. I took my first step in that direction today by trying my hand at a little metal work. I started the process of putting knee inserts and front dimples in my tank. If the tank had been perfect I probably wouldn't have put the front dimples in, but there were a couple of fairly large dents on the front of one side of the tank. Rather than fill them with bondo I decided to put dimples in. I still have to bondo the areas that I shaped to smooth them out a little, but honestly I'm pretty proud of how they came out. Certainly saved me a few dollars by not buying one off the shelf.

[Bankerdanny]

Welcome. Nice job on the tank.

[gspatc]

Thanks Danny. I'm going to get some bondo on it tonight to smooth the small dimples out.

BTW I'll be up in your neck of the woods for the Sox/Braves game next weekend.

[Bankerdanny]

Enjoy. The Cell is a great place to see a game. It doesn't have the aura of Wrigley, but it does have good food, good beer, comfortable seats, and great sight lines. Oh, and a team that has won a World Series in less than a century (can you tell I grew up on the south side).

Watch out for traffic if you're driving, they are working on the L tracks (which are at ground level there) that run between the different directions of the Dan Ryan (90/94) and sometimes the lanes nearest the tracks are blocked. If you can, take a Metra train, there is a stop at the park.

[gspatc]

Mostly working on my tank the last two days while I'm waiting on some more parts to come in. After I got the inserts rough shaped it was time for bondo. I'm no bondo expert, but like I said this project is more about learning new skills than anything else. Fortunately I'm not a complete perfectionist so I'm mostly happy with how it turned out. I still need to wet-sand the tank one more time, but the plan is to use a carbon fiber wrap. I briefly thought about skinning the tank with real carbon fiber, but for forty bucks I got a pretty large roll of the 3M scotchprint 1080 that I can try. If it doesn't work or I don't like it I can always go back to plan "A" and use the rest of the roll for whatever tickles my fancy.
The knee inserts are a little low with the factory seat, but I'm planning on making my own fiberglass bump stop seat so it will be significantly lower than the stocker.

[gspatc]

     The tank works continues. I tried that 3m scotchprint 1080 carbon fiber wrap, but I'm going to skip fail and go straight to epic fail. Even with the hair dryer helping there was just no way to fit the product to the contours of the tank and make it look good. Sooooo I'm on to plan "B".  I really want the essence or look of carbon fiber, but I really don't want to skin the tank with it if I don't have to. I really enjoy painting and the great thing about paint is you can always sand it back down and do something else if you don't like it.
     I found a number of tutorials online with techniques for painting fake carbon fiber patterns so I thought I'd give one of them a shot. We'll see how it looks. If it doesn't turn out I'll just sand it down and put the base color back on because I REALLY like it. It's Rustoleum Hammered Look in black in case you were wondering.
     I also finished cleaning and rebuilding the carbs and installed my new throttle.  Still waiting on my switches to come in though.

[FunJimmy]

Well, for a fella that claims to have no mechanical or build skills, your doing a great job. Keep it up.

Cheers
FJ

[gspatc]

Went out of town for the weekend so not much work done, but here is my update after a full two weeks of ownership. I am still working on the tank. After the disaster with the wrap I decided to try a faux carbon fiber paint job. I am pretty happy with how it turned out. It's not perfect, but I think it's pretty good. I will have to make the final decision on it after I sand it and put a couple more coats of clear on it.  Currently it has three light coats of clear.

I know it's not everybody's taste, but let me know what you think.

[gspatc]

Well it's been a slow week with work, kids, life etc, but I've managed to get a little work done. Finally got around to cleaning the front brake caliper and piston. I'm hoping that my piston is still good enough so I don't have to spend $90 bucks on a new one. I made the mold for my seat out of styrofoam, but I'm still waiting on my fiberglass supplies to come in. Hopefully they will get in tomorrow so I can get the seat finished glassed and then start working on the paint.

[gspatc]

The seat is fiberglassed and painted. I pretty much followed the youtube video that Herm from Dime City Cycles did for CafeRacer TV. It wasn't all that difficult, but if I had to do it all over again I would use the seat I just made as a mold. Doing it that way prevents a whole lot of body work because of the way the epoxy cures on that side. Plus I could keep that mold should I ever need to do the project again for some reason. Now I just have to come up with a mounting system to attach it to the frame. 

I couldn't stand not knowing what shape the wires under the electrical tape were in so I removed all of that. I'm glad I did. The front turn signal wires terminated under the wrap so they were wires to nowhere. Easy to run some new ones though, but I would have been scratching my head trying to figure out why they weren't working down the road. Also, one of the frame ground wires was in pretty bad shape so I ran a new one.  All in all there are only about 4-6 wires that I'm going to need to do some work on so I feel like I'm in pretty good shape there.

[bambuhiphop]

Seat looks great man!! Great job!

[gspatc]

Ran into a little problem with moving the electronics under the seat. The hump of the seat would need to be moved forward just a little because it pinches the wires. Obviously I can't move the hump because it's made out of fiberglass. I wasn't real happy moving the electrics under the hump anyways because the wiring harness really isn't long enough to reach comfortably and to be honest I don't want to lengthen it for a couple of reasons. So I decided to build a little pan under the frame in the triangle area. It looked like it was going to work "O.K.", but I just wasn't happy with it so I came up with another plan. Basically I pushed the rear wheel as high as it would go and then I took a piece of sheet metal and made a half-fender that comes forward to just behind the carbs. I know I am losing some of the open feel that I was going for, but once I add the side pieces of the box and get them all painted I think it will look pretty slick. Thoughts?

[gspatc]

Well it's not quite done yet, but it is road worthy (sort of). I actually had a fair amount of time this weekend to work on things and feel like I got quite a bit done.

I finished fabbing up and painting the electronics box that hangs underneath the seat. I know that I could have made it a little less deep, but I actually really like how it turned out. Nothing in that area is cramped for space so if I do need to get back in there to do some work it isn't that big of a deal.

I put my rear tire on and ran into a little snag. The master link I ordered doesn't work with my new chain! I was none too pleased, but before I ordered a new one I thought to check the one was on the old chain and sure enough it fit just fine. I did use a new c-clip though.

I spent the better part of yesterday and today wiring up my new left and right side electronics controls. I am using one of the "simple and clean" on/off and start switch from DCC on the right and a combination turn/headlight/horn on the left. Most of the wiring was in pretty good shape already so it was mostly a matter of taking the wires from the original controls and splicing them in with the new ones so that I would retain the factory color scheme and bullet connectors. While I was there I took the time to apply electronic contact cleaning solution everywhere to help keep the gremlins away. So far the only thing that has me scratching my head is the Headlight. I can not figure out how to get that thing on. The only thing that just occurred to me is that I no longer have a headlight on/off switch so maybe I need to splice those two wires together to make a constant on. I'll update later if that is the problem.

Other than that it has mostly been tidying up little things like making brackets to keep the battery in place, mounting the seat pan, bleeding the brakes, and putting everything back in its place. I still haven't decided where I am going to put my ignition switch. The P.O. had a giant "vader" windscreen on the bike so that was where his was mounted. I may end up cutting a hole in one of my side panels and putting it there since I guess it's just as good a place as any.

I did take it out for a very quick ride around the neighborhood and boy was that nerve racking. It's been a couple of years since I have ridden and I just had this thing stripped nearly all the way down. I was so nervous that a wheel was going to fly off or something.

[gspatc]

The headlight problem has been fixed. I guess sometimes it just helps to put your problems down in words because it was due to the fact that I had deleted the headlight on/off switch.

[gspatc]

Got some more work done on my seat. Grabbed some grey vinyl from the fabric store in the clearance section. 1 yard for $6 which is more than enough to do two seats. That's a good thing because I'm not sure yet how comfortable the foam I used is going to be. It kind of slipped my mind to take pictures while I was working on it, but I since I had so much vinyl I just used foam I had lying around the house. Base was a fiberboard type material from Home Depot, followed in ascending order by very thin foam wall insulation, foam yoga blogs cut to height, a yoga mat, and finally the vinyl.  I made two independent sections and I think I'm going to have to revise the vertical section because it is about 1/8th-1/2 inch too narrow on all sides. I'll see what the guys at work think since they will be more objective than I am.

I also re-painted my original emblems. I think they turned out pretty well considering I don't have the steadiest of hands.

BTW my helper is my 6 year old daughter.

[gspatc]

I just realized I didn't post any pictures of my completed tail light assembly. I really wanted to integrate it into the seat, but of course the light is a rectangle and the seat is curved. I thought if I heated it up with my heat gun a little that it would bend enough for me to get it to fit right. It worked, but I hovered ever so slightly too long on one section and it bubbled the lens a bit. It's barely noticeable when turned off, and you can't look directly at it when on because the led's are so bright so it's a none issue. I will say that I was as nervous as could be cutting that section out of my seat. It literally took me an hour to do it with the dremel because I intentionally cut it too small and then would shave a little off, test fit and repeat until it fit just right because I knew if I messed it up that was it. Live with the error or start the whole process of building a seat from scratch over again. After I fit it in place I used some regular silicone caulk to seal it all up and will be painting that black in the near future.

On a side note what do you guys think about a red/white or red/black checkerboard stripe going all the way from the tank to the tail? Too much?

[gspatc]

Went on a longer test ride (12 mi.) to work today. The bike seemed like it was slowing down a little too much when I had the clutch in. I stopped at a gas station halfway to work and sure enough my front brake was smoking. Not a lot, but any amount is too much. I let it cool down for a bit and then limped to work. I was worried when I took the master cylinder apart that the piston was too pitted to work properly, but thought that I'd give it a try. I'm guessing that is the problem, but thought that the brakes might not be fully bled too. Anybody have any suggestions?

[Bankerdanny]

Check the caliper. The area where you pad sits on the piston side was in pretty bad shape. Can you remove the pad on that side without much effort? If not you may need to sand that area then lightly lube the edge of the backing plate with disk brake lube.

[gspatc]

Pulled the caliper and the pad came right off, but the plastic washer/spacer/shim or whatever that thing is was warped. I imagine from the heat. I did notice that I didn't have one of those on the none caliper side. Do I need one? I lightly pulled the brake lever a few times and the piston seemed to retract into the caliper. I guess I'll just clean everything up again, reassemble, and see what happens.

[snowman]

I'm subscribed, want to see where I this goes.

[gspatc]

It will be Monday before I can update on if the brakes are fixed because the wife is out of town and I'm taking care of our six year old daughter so no riding until she is back in school. I can still wrench though so I reassembled the brakes and everything appears to be working well. I readjusted the floating part of the caliper and I think that might of been part of the problem too. While I was at it I thought that I'd dip back in to the motor a little. On my test rides I was bogging down under mid throttle conditions. I didn't worry about it too much because I knew I was going to be spending some time tuning since I had decided to go with pod filters.

When I rebuilt the carbs I decided to go with the middle setting on the needles. After pulling the plugs I could see that I was running a little lean so I pulled the carbs back off and moved the clips on the needles down a notch (stock setting). I also replaced the spark plugs today because the previous yahoo had put in champion spark plugs! I don't really like changing two things at the same time, but I really wanted to get the stock plugs in and start with a new baseline. I still haven't synched the carbs because I don't have the tool. Anyone know where I can get one on the cheap?

Put my emblems on. Not sure if I'm going to keep them on though. I have kind of gotten used to the cleaner look of not having them on there.

I included a picture this time of my little girl that I'm spending the weekend with. Think she'll be a future "ton up" girl?

[gspatc]

Got a chance to go for a nice little ride before I took the bike to the garage to get inspected. Looks like I got the front brake problem fixed. I'm not sure if it was cleaning the caliper again that did the trick or adjusting the floating part of the mechanism, but it's working like a champ now. The bike is also running sooo much better now. I doubt that has much to do with changing the spark plugs, but more with dropping the clip on the needle one notch to return it to its stock setting. I haven't pulled the plugs yet to take a look at them, but I'm not expecting any major surprises.

I did notice that I have a bit of oil leaking from the cover where my shift lever attaches. I won't be surprised if I need to replace the internal seal there because of the amount of built up gunk that was in there was unbelievable. I have a sneaky suspicion that all the crud was actually making a nice little "dirt gasket". I probably won't tackle that project until the winter though.