Many of you know that my youngest son, Logan, restored a 78 CB750K for his senior project in high school and I decided to keep that bike as my own bike to ride. Well, now the time has come to repay the favor and build a bike for him...that he wants to ride.
We found out that he is interested in the cafe styled bike and he doesn't feel comfortable learning to ride on a 750...so we started looking for something smaller.
Thanks to Bill Benton, we bought 2 frames, one set of carbs, a front rim, and a gas tank:
The first is a 1973 CB500 with a motor that won't turn over.
The second is a 1974 CB550F that's just the frame.
And thanks to Justin (aka justfours on this forum), we bought a complete but disassembled 550 and a complete and put together 500 engine that has compression and turns over. Also, we got several rims (one is a 350, one is a 450, haven't checked the other 2 or 3 yet), plus about 4 boxes of parts. Along with these parts are an extra set of cylinders, an extra head, an extra valve cover so I think we might be able to get the 500 engine that's in the 500 frame currently fixed in the long term as well.
Anyway, here's the plan: remove the stuck 500 engine and replace it with the 500 engine that's running, get it running and learn how to do the lowered handlebars, a cafe seat and hide the wiring and battery. This one won't have knee dents in the tank or rear sets to start off with. It's the one that Logan will learn to ride on after he finishes his MSF class. After he's comfortable with it, we'll put rearsets on it and let him get a bit of time riding that. But this 500 bike will eventually be sold. The money from that bike will be used to put the 550 back to life and that one will be tricked out like Logan wants it.
The eventual goal for Logan's bike will be something that we hope to have look something like this one...which is one of the bikes that I believe Devin from CognitoMoto did: