Topic: My 71 CB500 Cafe Project

[TonyDanger]

Hey everyone. I've lurked on this site for about a year. Signed up a while ago and didn't ever post much. Decided I'd go ahead and show what I've got done so far. First off, a little background and such.

I bought the bike from a friend of my girlfriend about a year ago. He had bought the bike with the expectation of fixing it up and using it for work. However, he wasn't much of a mechanic and the guy before him buggered a bunch of stuff up. I got the bike for $800, and everything was there, just needed a lot of cleaning and replacing of bad parts. Bike wasn't running but would kick over. I bought it because I got tired of riding a sportbike on the street and my supermoto sucks on highways and such, plus my girlfriend has a 75 CB400 which is just bad ass and I wanted something I could rock around town with her.

Anway, I've been slowly working on this bike over the past year. I wanted to go with the vintage racer style, so I was trying to eliminate the unnecessary off this bike. I have a 79 CB650 engine I'm going to eventually put in this frame, but I'm going to rebuild it first at a later date. Right now I'm going to try and run the original 500 for a while and see what I need to sort out on the rest of the bike for handling, reliability, and aesthetics. When I get to the point of putting in the 650, I'm going to tear it all the way down to the frame a paint all the little bits and pieces and clean it up properly.

Here is what the bike looked like before I tore into it.



Starting to take it apart



The front wheel looks like it could use some new spokes, but I'm going to just clean these guys up for now and put a new set on when I tear the whole thing down.


The forks were pretty gnarly from sitting in the trees with the ears covering them, so I took a wire attachment on a grinder to them, then hit them with black primer.



I had taken the carbs off and cleaned them really well. The seals looked good and all the jets seemed in good shape, so I just cleaned till I was satisfied and put them back together. If they leak, I'll get rebuild kits. #$%*es are expensive though...

Then the bike sat for about 6 months with no attention. I moved it down to Oregon where I go to school, and it was too cold outside to work in my garage. However, as of about 2 weeks ago, I started going at it again.

I decided to get rid of the speedo, both for looks and the fact that I've never had much luck with speedos being accurate and never pay attention to them. I carry a GPS at times so if I need to keep an eye on my speed I'll just bring my Garmin along.


I put on clip ons and I wanted to replace the mastercylinder and put a SS brake line on so I got ahold of an F4i master. Put the SS line on. I'm afraid that the F4i master will be overkill, so I might look for a spare DRZ SM master as the calipers are relatively the same size.




I was jazzed about this little trick of using bicycle steering stem for rearset mounts and got the entire set up for around 20 bucks. Then I got learneded on why they are a bad idea and will mess up your frame, so they are coming off soon and I'll be having a buddy weld on some metal plate instead.



I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to make my bumstop seat. I started making a thin sheetmetal pan for a base, but I don't know how I'm going to attach it to the bike. I have the stock seat pan that I took off the moldy nasty foam and cleaned it up a bit and spray it to prevent rust, but I don't think I'm going to use it. If anyone wants it, give me a shout. I need to somehow make shorter throttle cables too. I got replacement stock ones without thinking, and they are WAAAAAYYY to long with the clip ons. Anyone know a good alternative for shorter cables?

And for giggles, here is what gets me by while I work on this project.

[papp101]

Hey man, I'm doin the same thing with my seat right now, and I've done cables before with success.

For my seat I made a seat hump out of styrofoam and shaped it how I wanted it. Then I covered it in masking tape so the fiberglass resin wouldn't burn through.

Next I'm going to do one layer of that over the hump, fit that shell how I want it over the seat pan and then fiberglass over the whole thing. I'll use all the stock mounts and rubber bumpers and such to the new fiberglass pan. See Funjimmy's build for my inspiration.

As for shortening cables, we used to snip off the lead end, pull the cable out, cut the casing to desired length, PUT THE CABLE BACK IN, (sometimes you can salvage the small chrome tip on the casing) then drill a hole in a piece of wood with the same diameter and depth of the little lead end, then drill a smaller hole on the side to shove the wire through - this should go all the way through the mold to the other side.

Push the cable through, melt a shoot ton of solder in there with a torch and lots of flux. Let it cool, take it out and sand to desired shape, clip the excess and roll!

Anyone else done this?

[76_Paul]

Good progress on the bike!

I was contemplating making my own seat too, but after pricing out how much I would spend in supplies I decided it wouldn't cost me too much more to just be one from this guy: www.cafeseat.com  Wussy way out?  Possibly, but I have enough of a project on my hand with the my bike now that I can let someone else worry about messing with 'glass.  Besides the guy's shop is like 15 min from my house so I can check it out in person before I buy.

If you wanting to make your own seat I found these articles to be very helpful:

http://www.streetrodstuff.com/Articles/Body/Play_With_Fiberglass/
http://dotheton.com/index.php?topic=3374.0
http://dotheton.com/index.php?topic=7890.0


BTW the motard looks suh-weet!

[TonyDanger]

Papp- I'll see what I can do on that, sounds kinda scary. But then again, if I do it right I'll teach myself something!

Paul, thanks for the links, those are awesome! I think I can get the seat made okay, I'm just not sure how to mount it, but I think those links will steer me in the right direction. I think I'm going to hit the seat this week, probably tuesday. I'll post up how that goes.

[TonyDanger]

One thing I was thinking about doing, I want to shorten up the rear of the frame just a touch. I didn't want to cut it all the way back to the shocks, so I was thinking of cutting just after the rear fender mount in hopes of leaving the "brace". What do you think? Red lines are when I was thinking of cutting.

[cdoggy81]

good stuff, I like it

[TonyDanger]

Alright, so I made a new throttle cable out of the new ones I bought. Man, its amazing how much difference clip ons vs. stock bars makes! I messed up and made the return cable about a 1/4 inch too short, so yeah, it didn't go on. However, the action is so smooth that it really doesn't need it. I'll run it for a while with just the main cable and see if it works okay. It really should.



Started on the seat as well. This is more of a chore than I thought. First I made a pan to fit the bottom really quick.


 I couldn't find any foam in town for a decent price. I went to Joann Fabrics and their foam for 5 in was $68 a yard, and they would only sell down to a foot. So yeah, wasn't going to pay $24 bucks for foam I was gonna hack up. So I decided to make a cardboard skeleton and start wrapping it.




Started wrapping it with tin foil and tape.




It was impossible to get it even and symetrical. I spent about an hour and a half trying to layer tin and tape to get a good shape. Got pretty close and then just got fed up. I figured I could start glassing and with a little more stiffness make the shape. I started glassing but didn't take pics of that yet. I need to build up the left side more once this first layer dries. Its the same shape, but not as tall as the right side, so I need to bump it up. I plan on throwing quite a few layers on to make it sturdy, so I can sand it down to more even thickness if that's what it comes down to. I'll let you know how that whole scene goes.

[fuzzybutt]

One thing I was thinking about doing, I want to shorten up the rear of the frame just a touch. I didn't want to cut it all the way back to the shocks, so I was thinking of cutting just after the rear fender mount in hopes of leaving the "brace". What do you think? Red lines are when I was thinking of cutting.

why?

[TonyDanger]

I thought it would make a difference in how long my tail section would have to be. In the end, it didn't matter, it was fine.

[fuzzybutt]

good, cutting the frame is something i dont take lightly. if it isnt absolutely necessary and theres no way at all around it fine, but i do all i can to find a way not to cut on the frame. that said i just finished cutting the hell out of a cb750k frame, preparing for a hardtail.

[TonyDanger]

Someday I will make a hard tail too. It'll be a while though, the project after this bike is a 58 chevy apache. That'll be a total strip down to the frame and updating the entire drive train, suspension, and steering.

[TonyDanger]

So my fiberglass skills are weak and the seat didn't turn out even remotely well. There is the posibility of salvaging it, but I don't know if its even worth the time. I might just start from scratch again and try a whole new method.

I'm a little bitter.

[FunJimmy]

Hang in there Tony.

Fiberglass is a bi+ch anytime, but twice as hard when building a symmetrical cafe seat.
Getting the perfect shape and proportions can take forever.
Don't ask me how I know.

Build is coming along nicely.

Cheers
FJ

[TonyDanger]

Well, its been a long time since I've posted on the bike (jeez, over a year now!) so I thought I'd show the updates. I haven't been working on it too much because the past year has been fairly intense with school, but I have done a few things.

First, I worked with a friend of mine to build a few parts. First thing was some proper mounts for the rear sets. Didn't dig the bike stems after a while. I'm sorry I didn't take pictures of the little brackets before we welded them on.



Then I wanted to shorten up the rear a little and reinforce it while still having appropriate clearance, so this is what we came up with. I'm still figuring out a tail section to build to mask the ugliness, but I'm sure it won't be hard.



Then we made some new slip ons! I liked the BCR style peashooters but didn't want to spend that much and thought they were a little long, sticking out too much past the rear tire. So, we made some out of stainless tubing and some cans off ebay. The cans were pretty much straight tubes so we made a little insert for some backpressure.

Sorry for the crappy cell images, I'll try to get more later today or tomorrow.




I have to figure out a hanger set up. The post for hold the right shock on is snapped and just has enough threads to put the stock nut back on, but not enough to put a connecting nut on to make a hanger off that. I think I'm going to find some beefy tube clamps and make something off the top of the rear triangle.

I set the points and did a valve adjustment, and change the oil a few days prior, so I figured I'd start it up. I poured in a little gas and..... the carbs leaked. So I'm ordering up some kits and I'll rebuild those, then we'll see about getting her started.




I have a big question. How do I go about making the bike a kicker only? I'd love to get rid of the batter and everything all together and make the bike a few pounds lighter and clean out the triangle. I want to get rid of all the excess wiring associated with that and make a clean minimal wiring harness. I plan on only running the headlight and tail light (its a fun weekend bike and the area I live doesn't really care about blinkers). If someone could give me some insight on how to do that with these bikes or link me to a thread (the search function has been a real snot to me) I would greatly appreciate it!

[andy8190]

if you dont want to spend a lot of money on foam that you will try to cut up either try those potting styrofoam cubes (if you know what i mean) do trying using that great stuff foam filler. it comes in a spray can and its like a gel that hardens when it dries. Not sure if it will carve up very well but its worth a shot.