Been a lurker for the most part for the past few months trying to learn as much as I can from these bikes as I grew up with vintage european bikes and a slew of antique Harley Davidsons. My name is Lucas. I'm from Florida but currently living in Birmingham, AL since I started my career as a Mechanical Engineer about a year ago.
A little about my self: I grew up helping rebuild vintage Harley Davidsons and Indians with my dad and currently have a spectacular collection ranging from the 1920's to 1960's and a couple early 90s bikes. Wont go too in depth into the collection bc there's somewhere around 35 bikes total of which 28 are completely restored. I will say my favorite 2 are a 1947 Knucklehead and a 1948 Panhead (pictured below). Aside from bikes I'm huge into european cars and love my bagged 2012 VW GTI, love to surf, listen to music, and draw/paint.
Anyways, I purchased a 1973 CB750 about a month or 2 ago that was in pretty bad condition but with plans on making it run reliably and have a cafe racer style I have envisioned for a while... when I got it, it was detabbed but never painted after so surface rust everywhere, horribly hacked up electrical system, no seat, no front brakes, dirty everything, leaking head, motor knocking, ugly multicolor spray painted tank, etc. Other "mods" done to it was the exhaust and rejetting. I somewhat knew what I was getting into and i got it for ridiculously cheap and figured it would be a great way to learn how to do all this stuff myself.
So far this is the list of things i have done/replaced:
new OEM wiring harness
new Ricks motorsports reg/rec
new starter solenoid
new Uni pods
new 7" headlight from DCC
new headlight brackets
"new" front brake (from a '76 750)
Hagon rear shocks
Legendary Cycles thruxton seat pan
frame hoop welded on
Biltwell grips
new clutch and brake levers
new OEM right hand switches (they were cut off before)
Shorai LFX battery
new OEM ignition switch
LED tail light (still needs to be wired up)
may be missing a few odds and ends
The bad: the motor ended up seizing up on me on a short ride recently so I will be purchasing a good running motor in the next few weeks and swap that over into the bike. I'll be taking apart the current motor and rebuilding from the ground up with a big bore kit and the necessary parts to accompany.
other than getting the motor swap done and having it run reliably while i rebuild the old one, I plan on upgrading the front end with progressive springs including a refresh on all the fork components and replacing worn out bits throughout the bike to bring it back to life as much as I can.
Its a long read but thanks for checking it out and I hope to learn a ton more, hopefully contribute when I can and meet some great people along the way!
