before I bought this I used to refit superhawk and black bomber headlights. They used to be cheap but thanks to me not keeping my big mouth shut on the internet they are no longer. I also used to use a hodaka m50 headlight because a mini-gauge fit right into the back of them. The scarcity of small headlight bulbs and the small overall headlight shell is what drove me to try out benjie's bucket. With the superhawk headlights I used to make my own gauges using the original housings and the internals from crappy minigauges, they worked ok but it was a lot of work.
now on to the Benjie bucket:
Overall I like the headlight bucket it is a quality piece, very thick and sturdy.
Issues:
out of the box you will need to do a fair amount of finishing work, it is not a take out of the box paint and install kind of part, but custom stuff seldom is.
The part came sprayed in aluspray which is an excellent filler primer, but there were wrinkles in it and the entire bucket needed to be sanded. I used no filler and just block sanded and then wet sanded. I painted it with rustoleum flat silver and it looks like a metal bucket. Any waviness or dark areas in the photos are a combination of crappy photos and smudgy black fingerprints that had not wiped off before taking the photos.
If I had to order it all over again I would ask that he not drill the headlight screw holes because they were slightly off. I went through about 3 or 4 headlight rings before I found one that lined up perfectly.
I also might choose to drill the gauge myself because as it stands it feels a hair off center to me. Once installed it was not noticeable at all (more on that in a second) but on the bench it looked a little off.
The hole for the gauge was slightly too small. I was able to enlarge it and make the gauge look more on center but it took some sanding. I still feel I need to enlarge it because the gauge still slightly touches the headlight bulb (halogen h4) and blows it out at high rpm vibration. One way I enlarged the hole was to wrap the outside of a junk gauge in sandpaper and then stick it in the hole and twist until it sanded it perfectly round and smooth (when i got it from Benjie there were some small slight imperfections in the hole - not noticeable unless you are on top of it but I noticed). Once I did that and shimmed it properly no more touching and blown headlights. The pics above show an older headlight because I needed the bike last weekend and had not picked up a new h4 bulb, so I reused the junker I bought at mid Ohio (astute lookers will notice the actually bulb is in sideways, the previous owner of this headlight installed it in the ring that way, I am too lazy to correct it).
I did have to drill my own holes for the bottom to run the cable and the wires inside. This was easy and I think it looks pretty clean.
I bought Benjie's fork ears but ended up not using them. I mounted the headlight on a '78 CB750F and there was no clearance with the horns or iggy switch. I ended up using a set of old Japanese cafe racer fork ears which look totally badass. I recommend custom fork ears for the F bikes, the longer the better. I also lowered the headlight and I think it looks nice a lot lower (in line with the top of the tank). I mocked it up on a K bike parts bike I had (1973) and I had none of the issues I had with the F, so clearly the unit was designed for 69-76 K bikes and the extra rake plus top mount dash and iggy switch of the F add some small but not unsolvable issues. One thing that bugs me is the location of the ignition switch on the F and I plan on relocating it. I may change over to one of those car start ones so I can clean up the right bar switch (I want to put a deadman's in for racing and ditch the not working kill switch too). I thought about mounting the key in the headlight like a triumph but two things occurred to me: 1) it looks ugly, and 2) there really is not room inside the bucket with the headlight and the gauge.
the gauge mounts inside will need to be shimmed for the gauge to sit right with a halogen removable bulb headlight, but otherwise it is pretty straight forward and lined up well. If you wanted to get Benjie to drill your gauge hole this part will work, if you do it yourself you may have to modify the gauge mounting bracket.
I have LED visibolts for the idiot lights, but have yet to install them. When I do they will go in the bucket above the gauge.
I used a 1982 CB750C tach as the gauge. It is nearly the same size dimensionally as the stock CB750 tach but it has a black face and a black bezel (My F's gauges were chromed) which is why I chose to paint my headlight bucket silver (plus my bike is silver). The gauge looks more race bike which is what I like, but if I had to do it again I would use the stock tach instead. The DOHC CB750s and SOHC CB750s both use a 4:1 ratio which I tested with a dwell meter for accuracy. Only the customs have individual gauges, the F and K do not, that is if you want a black face gauge. The speedos only go to 85 mph which is why I chose to use the tach instead. The bucket is painted in rustoleum flat sliver which gives it a metal look. A lot of people at mid-o tapped the bucket to see if it was metal, it was fun to watch with the bike parked.
Overall I highly recommend this part, provided you know that you are going to have to work with it a little to get perfect results. I am fairly certain I got one of the first ones he made for sale so I am sure these issues will be worked out in subsequent units.
Now a moment on the ears because I get questions about them all the time. I got them brand new in a box of imported stuff from japan that had not seen the light of day since 1978. They are long out of production and are simply stamped made in japan with no other mfg mark. I believe they are also stainless steel They are a higher quality than the crappy ones you get from jc Whitney or other places. I really like them and if someone had access to stamping mfg, I would consider having sets remade, provided I could be the distributor for them.
