Honda CX 500 1st Café Racer Build (from the UK)

I've been rubbish at updating this build. To be fair though, I have been fairly busy with other things and have just been tinkering around with things.

The carbs have been stripped, cleaned & balanced (just need to polish the carb bodies). Whilst I had them apart the jets were upgraded (guessed at 90/120), to match the pod air filters and free flowing exhaust (seen some nice Norton Pea Shooter replicas that should fit), the bike will be going on the dyno when finished, so it might get re-jetted again.

I've also been tinkering around with the footpegs. Rather than going for rear sets (I want a slightly more relaxing riding position), I decided to swap the standard rupper pegs for some alloy ones from a Yamaha R1. They fitted without too much modification - a little bit of grinding of the pegs & brackets, some tweaking of the springs and the rear brackets needed drilling out for the R1 pin to fit. The finished result looks pretty good. As this is going to be a two seater (probably more Cafe Cruiser than Cafe Racer), rear pegs have been fitted.

IMAG0078-1.jpg


This is how they look on the bike



P1070432.jpg
 
Things also got delayed due to the swinging arm going missing (a long story, but I gave it to a mate to weld the hugger bracket on and he found a bit of rot, so gave it to a local fabricator to weld - the trouble was my mate disappeared off to Spain and I didn't know where he had dropped it off).

As I mentioned, there was a bit of rot underneath the swinging arm, so it was completely cut out and a new piece fabricated and welded into place (along with the hugger bracket). It was then cleaned up and painted.

IMAG0081-1.jpg


IMAG0080-1.jpg



It's now beginning to look like I'm making some progress, now the rear end has been refitted.

P1070429.jpg


P1070430.jpg


P1070431.jpg



The next job is to sort out the electrics and relocate the battery where the collector box was. Then sort the fuel tank (the original was too far gone, so I have picked a replacement up off ebay), prep it and paint it. Fit the exhausts, then hopefully fire her up. Then decide what I am going to do with the seat.
 
Nice work so far! I just discovered that your tank is a great looking café tank (longish, curvy w knee indents) that I may consider for my cb350 project. Can you make some measurements of that tank? Length, width, height, petcock outlet OD, and tunnel width.
 
Subscribed...let see how the seat turns out.By the way where did you find the seals for the Marzocchi stradas,I been looking all over.
 
Back
Top Bottom