Author Topic: '75 Cafe rebuild in progress (Read 13711 times)

cafe75-550 · « **on:** October 28, 2006, 10:26:10 PM »

I've been running around the boards here for awhile, but haven't done much posting until recently. I've gotten quite a few questions about my bike, so I decided I should just start a thread on it instead of highjacking others to explain some of the things I did. My bike is a 1975 CB550 I bought off of Ebay a year and a half ago with a matching parts bike ('76 550) thrown in with the deal. I rode as is for awhile, then last winter tore the whole thing down to the frame. I replaced all the bearings, stripped and polished the frame (yes, polished), removed all the tabs and gusseted and fully welded all the joints and pressed bits,rebuilt the front forks with Progressives and new seals, replaced the rear shocks with new 750 units, hacked up and fitted a Ebay cafe seat, hid the battery and put the electrics under the seat. I also...
-fitted adjustable clip ons and moved all the switches to the center console
-hammered a 750 tank with knee dents and an early style cap
-moved the rearsets to the rear passenger pegs
-pulled anything and everything that doesn't make it go
-replaced the headlight with a Bates 6"
-replaced all the signals
-replaced the 550 gauges with 360's
-replaced the rear wheel with a 17" CB650 rear
-swapped on a dual disc setup (thank you parts bike)
-swapped in the '76 motor (to rebuild the orignal)

Ive still got a bunch left to do, including finishing the body work and paint (gloss black one of these days), laying up a new seat (exact fit to show off the framrails), making a cover for the electric panel under the seat,rebuilding and polishing the hubs and wheels (18" alum. front) and finally rebuilding the '75's motor, using either 605 kit with extensive headwork and cam or doing the hybrid thing with a 650 head and much larger (64 - 65mm) pistons for somewhere between 650 and 672cc's.The latter may be too much custom work/money, so the money may just go into headwork to make the 550 breathe. And here are the pictures...

nickjtc · « **Reply #1 on:** October 28, 2006, 11:41:43 PM »

Beautiful job there. Well done. What is your long term plan to keep the frame looking nice and shiny?

cafe75-550 · « **Reply #2 on:** October 28, 2006, 11:48:45 PM »

Thanks! The frame has a light clearcoat on it to prevent it from rusting...it was a little difficult to get it to stick to the polished frame, but so far so good...

750goes · « **Reply #3 on:** October 29, 2006, 12:49:52 AM »

Well done, that certainly is a different way to approach the frame, I hope in all sincerity that the clearcoat holds up for you...how long did it take to polish - and what did you do it with??

I like the tail light as well - where did that come from,, it looks quite interesting......

cafe75-550 · « **Reply #4 on:** October 29, 2006, 01:49:57 AM »

First thing I did was strip the paint with a chemical paint stripper. Then I took to the rust and left over crud with a wire wheel mounted on an electric drill. I used a couple of different wire wheels then moved to 3M type abrasive pads, getting finer as I went along. Then finally (finally!!) moved to a hard metal polishing kit I picked up at Ace hardware. The finish isn't exactly chrome like (it photographs very well), but I just didn't have the patience to polish by hand with sandpaper

.All told it took nearly a month working on it part time, maybe a couple hours a day? I also spent a few days cutting and welding (removing tabs and adding gussets and completing welds). The clear coat seems to work well enough, plus it gets help from all the oil

, between the engine seals (it had been sitting for an unk. period of time) and the lack of a chain guard it sees quite a bit

. Besides, as long as I don't let any rust take hold its not hard to get the bike down to mostly frame to work on it anyway...Oh and the tail light is the '39 (or maybe '40?) Ford car variety.

ProTeal55 · « **Reply #5 on:** October 29, 2006, 01:41:47 AM »

Killer scoot ya got their - A+ !

Roach Carver · « **Reply #6 on:** October 29, 2006, 04:47:39 AM »

nice. the knee inserts look fantastic.

bill440cars · « **Reply #7 on:** October 29, 2006, 06:29:22 AM »

Gotta tell you that your bike is really cool!!

I really like the way the bike looks with the hiding of all that's possible. The frame is really nice, just don't know if I could be that patient (Glad that you were). I've always liked a tank with the knee inserts but, I also like the way DME extended the look of his (I'd like to have a mix of the 2, for mine) I'd probably screw up a tank, if I tried the insert thing. I'd like to see more on the switch relocation though. Also like the black motor (only deviation for me would be black with the edges of the fins polished and with finned covers where possible) I really think the taillight is a cool touch too

and I think it might be a 39' cause the 40's, that I've seen, were wider and a different design (the ones I've seen were the 40 Deluxe model, and that might be the difference). But listen, at any rate, you've got a really fine ride that you've created. And as usual, it has just enough, of your own touch, to be distinctive. Keep up the good work.

Later on, Bill

cafe75-550 · « **Reply #8 on:** October 29, 2006, 10:11:16 AM »

Thanks Bill! I tried to make the bike as clean as possible, I was inspired by some of the old british cafe's, of course, they can run a battery eliminator and don't have starters...The knee inserts actually weren't all that bad to do, part of it though was I was able to back up my hammer work with a block since I had the neck out of the tank at the time. Granted, I also have some experiance as a concourse british car mechanic, but it really wasn't all that bad. The motors on both the bikes were black when I got them, most of it seems to be staying on ok, but after the rebuild I'm going to redo all of that, probably stay black but that polishing the fins things sounds like a cool idea

. Here's a pic of the switches as they are, I'm toying with the idea of ditching the starter all together to get rid of all the associated electrical bits and make hiding the rest a lot easier. Center button is start, right is kill, left is blinkers which aren't quite functional yet, need to rewire the bike...

forwheeldrift · « **Reply #9 on:** October 30, 2006, 05:20:09 AM »

grate idea for the switches

i Had a similar idea using the MPH gauge housing

[img width= height= alt=Click to enlarge.]http://img1.putfile.com/thumb/10/29017485820.jpg[/img]
[img width= height= alt=Click to enlarge.]http://img1.putfile.com/thumb/11/31318463831.jpg[/img]

where did you get your throttle controll assembly?

cafe75-550 · « **Reply #10 on:** October 30, 2006, 06:34:25 AM »

The throttle assembly came from Cycle-recycle if I remember correctly, in their "chopper stuff". Where did you come by that switch? I like the look of it and I could probably use the cover to keep from accidentally killing my ignition...

doug_id · « **Reply #11 on:** October 30, 2006, 07:54:27 AM »

Very Very nice!

Hey can you post a pic of the other side of the bike? I would like to get rid of the switches and crap like you have done. Wiring intimidates the heck out of me though

forwheeldrift · « **Reply #12 on:** October 31, 2006, 05:32:12 AM »

Quote from: cafe75-550 on October 30, 2006, 06:34:25 AM

The throttle assembly came from Cycle-recycle if I remember correctly, in their "chopper stuff". Where did you come by that switch? I like the look of it and I could probably use the cover to keep from accidentally killing my ignition...

i got them from auto zone they were around 4 bucks and come in Manny color's
thanks for the info on the throttle assembly

KB02 · « **Reply #13 on:** October 31, 2006, 06:11:13 AM »

Sweet looking ride, man.

Where (and how) did you hide the battery? The next project I have in mind (if I can get the bike away from my cousin) is to build a stripped down, cafe style bike like yours. All I want to see is frame, engine, gas tank and a place to sit down.

cafe75-550 · « **Reply #14 on:** October 31, 2006, 10:01:57 AM »

KB-
The battery is under the rear hump of the seat, I used a gel type battery mounted on its side in order to get it to fit, then made a battery bracket that mounts it to the bottom of the old rear fender mount. The aluminum sheet you can see in the 2nd to last picture is the bottom of the battery case.

Doug-
But the other side of the bike shows the oil leaks!

(shifter seal must be out...) I'll get some pics up later today. Wiring isn't exactly my favorite job either, but its not too bad. Plus I think quite a bit of it will go away when I remove the starter after the engine rebuild...

tsflstb · « **Reply #15 on:** October 31, 2006, 10:21:00 AM »

Did you machine those brake rotors or are they from another bike? Looks nice.

cafe75-550 · « **Reply #16 on:** October 31, 2006, 04:31:01 PM »

To be honest I just took them off my parts bike (above) and moved them to my cafe. I really don't know what they're from, other than at some point someone drilled the hub part of the rotor and removed and replaced the braking surface, as you can see from the hex heads. They're only 4.5 mm thick

, vs the 6mm I pulled of off my girlfriend's 77 550F. I was kind of hoping more of the rust would come off under braking, but Im not about to turn these suckers... On that note, if anyone knows what these are from, I'd love to know!

Chris Liston · « **Reply #17 on:** October 31, 2006, 05:23:38 PM »

maybe machined 80's Suzuki GS rotors. There a 6bolt rotor too.

cafe75-550 · « **Reply #18 on:** October 31, 2006, 10:04:25 PM »

Hmmmm- well, a search of all things brake rotor on ebay left me with nothing so far on the rotors. The Suzuki GS stuff is close, but none of the ones I saw had round holes or that pattern on the arms. I guess I'll just keep looking, bound to turn up one of these days.

Doug- here are the pics of the other side...

Jim Shea · « **Reply #19 on:** November 01, 2006, 03:52:13 AM »

The bike looks great; how noisy are those pipes? are they legal where you are from?
Jim.

cafe75-550 · « **Reply #20 on:** November 01, 2006, 06:29:35 AM »

Thanks Jim! The pipes are pretty loud, not so bad at idle but once you get above 3k they get pretty interesting. And I would have to say that they're probably not strictly legal anywhere...but its still not as loud as most of the choppers running around, so I don't worry too much about it.

Jim Shea · « **Reply #21 on:** November 01, 2006, 10:43:48 AM »

Mate,
I agree, it must sound nicer than the slash cut HDs you hear all the time?

cafe75-550 · « **Reply #22 on:** November 02, 2006, 09:17:25 AM »

yeah definetely better than the HD's

. Just a whole different quality to it. Gives a very nice roar when you get it going too...

Jim Shea · « **Reply #23 on:** November 02, 2006, 10:56:40 AM »

SteveD and I heard a CR750 full throttle on open pipes recently, it was probably? the best noise out of the hundred+ bikes we heard that day!

isred · « **Reply #24 on:** November 11, 2006, 06:45:53 AM »

First off wow , nice bike. I hope mine looks falf that nice. Have a question for you. You used the 650 rear wheel. I am looking for a larger rear hub and am wondering if that is a direct bolt on or if it was shimmed or needed spacers to work? Also why did you use the 650 hub and not the 750 rear hub? Thanks for reading.

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Author Topic: '75 Cafe rebuild in progress (Read 13711 times)

Jim Shea

Jim Shea

Jim Shea

isred