One of the things I really like about this forum is that there are so many quality builds. There's a lot of different directions that they go and I appreciate a lot of different styles even when they are not my style. I'm blown away by some people's fabrication skills. I also get it that some people just want a good reliable older motorcycle and don't care a lot about restoring them back to new condition or upgrading performance. Older Honda's always had good sound performance. That being said, and this rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but I detest builds that are only about the looks to the extent that they degrade performance and end up with almost unrideable or unsafe motorcycles. I've watched Orange County Choppers and rarely didn't think that their typical build was a death machine. I'd feel safer riding down I195 here in Massachusetts at 165 MPH in traffic on my MT10 then riding one of those bikes at 30 MPH and trying to make a turn. There seems to be a trend where cafe racer type builds (not here) are becoming totally art projects. I lived through some of the original cafe racer years and that was about trying get better performance out of their motorcycles. More and more often I see these things with 1" of suspension travel because it looks cool. This totally blows my mind and there are people giving out advice about suspension with no clue how dangerous it is. Quite often they will double down to try and discredit people that actually are giving good advice. I want a motorcycle that performs well and that I can ride. I put on 6,000 to 12,000 motorcycle miles a year.
I'm hoping that my Honda build is going to look killer but I also want to upgrade performance and reliability wherever I can. My motor is done and I think it'll have better performance than it was originally stock. With some help, I think my electronics will be very good. This CB550 seems to get a lot of praise as a good handling platform to begin with. I'm going to get the weight of this bike down substantially. The progression of making modern motorcycles lighter is amazing. There are parts on this Honda that weigh a ton. I've stripped off everything that I can. I bought aluminum rims and am changing out every single control, button and original electrical system component. I'll be interested to get this on a scale when it's done.
Now don't get offended if you disagree.....I'm tired of black motorcycles, cars and trucks. For me, it's been done to death. IMO, on motorcycle builds, blacking out parts is an easy way around doing the grunt work to refinish old parts. If someone really just wants a machine to ride and doesn't want to spend a lot of time refinishing, I get it. This build is going to be as black free as possible. The tires will definitely be black.
Every time I see an older motorcycle with the aluminum polished out I get a little weak in the knees and decided I wanted to do that. I did my homework as I didn't know much about how builders get the results. I call it grunt work. My original trade is carpentry so I know how the dull tedious time doing the grunt work gets you to the end where people ooo and ahhhh. My motor took from June to October to get it paint ready. I wore out 2 dremels until I bought a 3rd high end one. In the process, I learned how to polish out aluminum parts. It's pretty simple, sand, sand, sand and then sand some more. Then it's polish, polish and polish again. Lots of hours. The outer cases came out pretty good. I've got a ton of hours in the frame but that gets powder coated so it's a little more forgiving. Currently I've spent the previous 2 weekends, both days working on the rear hub. Aluminum parts take a beating and my 550 only has 9700 miles on it. I figure I might finish it tomorrow if I work all day on polishing. That's strictly the hub, not the plate with the brake assembly. What else are you going to do in mid winter in Massachusetts when you motorcycle obsessed? I think it's gonna look pretty cool with new aluminum rims and new spokes.
Here's a few pictures of my progress.
