So a couple of days ago my dad and I went and picked up a beat up 1974 Cb 550 from a friend of mine. The bike had been sitting in his back yard for almost a decade, and he let us have it for free, so that was exciting. We decided we're going to strip it down completely and build it back up as a cafe racer. We're going to be doing this mostly on a budget, so we will see what we can get. This is our first time working on a motorcycle this in depth so we will see how it turns out.
A couple of pictures of what she looked like when we first picked her up.
The first thing we did was start to hose her off and try to clean it up a bit. Si we pulled the tank and the seat, and started to hose her off. She was extremely dirty, but with some scrubbing she cleaned up a bit. it turns out this bike was the home to a number of creatures. There was a bunch of rat crap on the air filter element, and once we started to hose her down lots of little spiders started creeping out. Four black widows, and a bunch of white creepy looking under water spiders.
Here's a dead spider
and here is how she looked when we were done hosing her down
The bike had been sitting for such a long time my dad and I feared the engine would be stuck, but after we cleaned up the bike I hopped on and gave the kick starter a kick, and Voila! she turns with ease. I pulled a couple tappet covers and peeked inside and it looked very clean and nice.
Next thing we did was pull the carbs, battery and air box.
When we picked her I noticed that there was still gas in the tank and the petcock was left open. So I new that carbs would be bad, and they were.
They were pretty bad so I used the last of my carb cleaner spray on them, and then called it a day. We still have a lot to do, but the first day went as good as it gets. More to come soon. All tips and helpful advice is welcome and greatly appreciated. This project would not be doable without the help from this forum. Thanks all.
