Okay, I'll start with my story right now.
I bought this bike when I was 19 in 2011 just a few month before my A-level just to have something to work on while doing all that theoretical stuff. At that time I was naïve and thought I'd convert this thing into a caferacer with my pocket money within a year …
Within the following months I did minor works on the bike like disassembling, getting a not so rusty fork and carbs, some manual polishing works, clearing the triangle in the frame and so on.
The great change happened when I got an apprenticeship as a plant mechanic with an associated university course in mechanical engineering. From that point I had a bit more money, ideas and opportunities to convert the bike.
I collected more spare parts, seperated multiple engines and gave my motor, frame and some other parts away for blasting and powdercoating.
Since the old tank wasn't what I wanted to fit the bike I took a CX 500 tank from my fathers spare parts and welded new braces on it to fit the 550's frame properly.
Another step was the seat. I promised to offer my girlfriend a kind of “emergency seat”. You might have been wondering about its length and the pair of passenger footrests.
In fact I planned a seat with a hump since the beginning of the build. Because alloy parts were too expensive and I wanted to paint the bike either way I planned a steel construction.
But how to build a hump yourself if you aren't that familiar with bending and hammering metal sheets?
My solution was taking the tank of an old German moped, a Zundapp KS 50, and form it into the right shape.
With a pipe welded in the hump offered space for the lithium ion battery and my rear lights. Connected to a part of the original seat pan it fit properly and offered at least a bit of riding comfort.
I know, the edges of the hump are special and don't meet with the round shape of most caferacer humps but I saw the perfect compliment to the tank's shape in that form of hump.
Before
And the result after painting
Visiting a classic motorcycle race at Spa Francorchamps in Belgium I noticed some old Honda CB 500 and CB 750 racers with just a single tachometer. In that moment the idea of creating my own single-instrumented cockpit was born. At home I finally found an old digital Sigma bike speedometer (Why do these bike computers calculate up to 200mph? :-D). I took it apart to the display unit, connected some momentary switches to all necessary functions and placed them at the back of the tachometer's housing. For the right illumination I placed 3 SMD LEDs at the bottom of the gauge face.
Then I integrated all the control LEDs and the display unit (I meanwhile decided to go with the black display frame) into the gauge face. I have been really pleased by the results.
Using other lamp brackets for the also changed headlight, I made two new aluminium brackets to get the tachometer a bit lower. Also a new clear glass headlight has been adapted to the original headlight case.
Wiring took quite a time since electrics were new to me. Finally I managed to store the electrics into a pan under the seat, the hump and the usual connections in the headlight case, except the rectifier which is mounted under the pan to offer enough cooling air.
Last winter I rebuilt the engine with the best parts of 3 engines, painting the cylinder black for a more classy look.
Finally I managed to marry the engine to the bike in spring and the race to completion began.
My goal was to get the bike on the street in the mid of the summer.
As soon as the wheels were installed with new alloy rims and stainless spokes and tires I started manufacturing my own front fender out of an old Kawasaki plastic fender. I cut the alloy brackets, polished them and connected them to the fender with stainless rivets.
After assembling the most parts of the bike I managed to drive my first round around the block what motivated me just more to finish it this year.
Video of my first round? Here it is, turn the volume up (for brake squealing
)...
First ride on my CB 550 Cafe RacerFinally the parts were now ready to be painted. I did not want a black or silver paint. After going multiple times through my color list I decided to go for a metallic green with a black stripe. It's a tribute to the japan bikes of the 70's and 80's which had bright colors, too. I did not want to hide away the bike's origins with a abstruse color scheme. Some people already called the paint “kawasaki-ish” but let me tell you, it is not as bright as in the most pictures in reality.
I drove the bike for about 700 miles without a proper seat, in fact just on the bare powdercoated seat pan.
As the money reached out to do the final step, I finally got a well manufactured seat offering a bit of comfort and enough place for 1 ½ men or 1 man an a sweet pin-up girl ;-) (at least for some miles).
As some final information on the bike here are the changes made in a short list:
-Behr alloy rims with stainless spokes
-Shortened version of Benjiescaferacer's 4-2 exhaust system
-CX 500 E tank
-double disc conversion
-Koni shocks in the rear
-Wilbers progressive springs in the fork
-clear glass headlight
-Nissin radial brake mastercylinder
-forged alloy handlebars
-custom fender
-custom seat/hump/rearlight
-custom chainguard
-custom tach/speedometer-combination
-boxed swingarm
-air filter pods
-CB 650 oil pan for more oil capacity
-lithium-ion battery in hump
-some minor equipment and tweaks
So, that's my story. If anyone wants to see every pic and step I did on that bike visit my build-blog under
http://cb550cafeit.blogspot.com.
Thanks for your patience!
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