that was some good infomation about the 550 and maybe a tongue lashing on the duc. hopefully I did not snip a nerve. I was just trying say that I want to use an older look with newer techno. ducati just happened to be coming out with this new style retro next year and I just happened to see it on the internet.
none the less, back to the task at hand. I have some mxer buddies with tons of parts. I will check that option out.
as far as the clip on stuff. I am not one to pick up something and put add ons just to ride. Anything I get, especially bikes, that looks a little beat up I tear into it and make it my own. I do not take chances when riding. So hopefully by spring this bike will be road worthy. If it takes a year, I am not worried. it will make it just that much more enjoyable when puttering around to my favorite hangouts. thanks again for the input like I said all comments and ideas are welcome.
Didn't mean for it to be a tounge lashing, just trying to clue you in to the hip lingo, daddy-o. No nerves snipped here. The thing is if you do a search on the net to find bikes and you type in sport classic you will get tons of duc stuff and not much else. If you do a search for streetfighter you will get a lot of stuff very similar to what you are trying to do to give you some ideas. Sportclassic is a pretty neat name for the not quite cafe not quite streetfighter bikes that are being built now, but unfortunatly duc co-opted it.
If you are looking for examples of other streetfightered cb550s, you will likely find them overseas where the japanese, english, and germans seem to be building anything they can get their hands on. The japanese espically since the early cb's are highly revered as part of their heritage. In america small displacement bikes are not as popular and people would rather stretfighter newer sport bikes than modernize a bunch of old nails. There are a few of us out there, but more often it is reserved for the bigger bikes like the cb750s, kz1000s, gs1100s, etc...
You three best friends in building your cb550 are going to be your measuring tools (dial caliper and tap measurer), your research skills and powers of observation, and a good local salvage yard and bike community. Take all practical measurements of your existing bike and carry them with you along with your measuring tools. Some measurements that are curcial but you may not have thought about are the distance between the sprocket and the centerline of the rim (this helps in figuring chain line since you will align the centerline of the rim with the centerline of the bike), the distance between the chain and the tire, the width of the pivot, and the diameter of the pivot bolt. Go around an measure as many bikes as you can find, this will give you an idea as to what comes close to your specs (remember those, you should be carrying them around). visit motorcycle salvage yards often. When I was building my h1, I made friends with the local salvage yard and he let me work in the back. I found a frame identical to the one I was building and just played around with different pieces till I had a rough setup, then I paid for what I needed and left the rest behind. if you know a modern sportbike component will fit, read as much as you can about that bike, there might be upgrades or other bikes that interchange as well (for instance I figured out how to use the fzr600 front on my h1, then I found out the gixxer front end is apopular bolt on swap, so just through research I figured out how to put a gixxer front end on my bike). Setting up the front end is easy, the rear end is going to be the tough one so start there.
