1974 CB360 - My first cafe attempt

you've got a nice looking machine going.

I've got the 180 watt r/r from sparckmoto sitting on my work bench, I will install it this winter.
It helps w low rpm discharge issues, and won't overcharge at high rpm. I have known matt (sonreir) owner of sparckmoto.com through DTT for several years now. I have no doubts about the product and have heard nothing but great reviews from others here who have them up and running.

http://sparckmoto.com/Products

I realize its comparing apples and oranges. However, I had a 4.5 inch firestone on my 360. the heavier tire really didnt seem to affect acceleration too much but it annihilated the gas milage. MPG more than doubled when I lost the fat rear tire and swapped in the 110 Avon. I could not believe the difference.
 
ManxieRacer said:
The current World Superbike guys are only getting a maximum lean angle of 60-61 degrees and that's with elbows on the ground nearly! I would very much like to see this lil CB get that low...

Great little bike though, USD fork conversions always looks sweet but not sure on those superbike tyres either. Kinda like putting Formula 1 tyres on a Fiat 500.

360 is a lot narrower than an in-line 4, even a modern one.
Probably on par with Ducati twin.
Tyres are the thing that limit cornering more than ground clearance on a modified 360 (stock they suck and grind pieces off ;) )
 
Heheh great reply to all the nonsense. Sounds like it's going to be a smartly modernized bike. Keep it up
 
I dig it. Personally I'm glad you did the wheel conversion so I can hear first hand whether or not you feel it was an improvement over stock. It's all theory until somebody goes out and does it for them self.

To address your original question, I'm running a Ballistic EVO2 4 Cell battery on my 360 with the Reg/Rec from Sonreir. The important thing with the lithium batteries is to keep charging voltage under 15v and not let the battery discharge past 9V. I've tried the cheap kohler reg/rec before and it didn't quite do the job but the Sparck Moto one works great. I kept my e-start but the battery is so small that I prefer to kick it so I don't brick the battery.

If I were to do it again, I'd either go for the 8 cell version or find a better place to put a conventional battery. Unlike conventional batteries, the lithiums won't let you kick start the bike if it's fully drained. Depending on your set up I'd also consider investing Rick's Motorsports upgraded stator and reg/rec combo. Kind of steep for just ~20watts upgrade over stock, but its better than worrying about the battery draining at idle.
 
Actually, the Rick's unit is about 40W over stock.

But keep an eye on the Sparck Moto facebook page or our section of the forums. Good things coming soon. ;)
 

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That's an awful lot of front brakes though. The safety issue with so much brake is that it is really easy to lock up the front end and that's never a good thing. A single 300mm disk is enough to slow my TZ350 road racer from 140 cleanly. We tried doubling them up and made it harder to ride hard. Like all things on a bike, they must be balanced to work well as a complete system. Going back to the TZs again, my son crashed his with a single disk because at the end of a long straight the front tire was cool and braking too hard locked it for a moment and that was enough to through him and the bike on the ground hard (with a single disk).

The two issues with wide tires are direction changes and getting enough heat into them. I happen to like wider wheels and tires and my 750 has a 130 rear/110 front and to be honest that's all it needs and both of those sizes are bigger than stock. Your front end change will make a difference to rake and trail and until you try it, all we can do is to speculate on how it might handle.

Getting heat into the tires may be an issue especially on the first few corners as the bike has neither the weight not the power to fully load them, so wider is usually not an improvement in handling. If you do get enough heat in to make them work, you will start to uncover the frame and swingarm deficiencies.

Stay safe and keep having fun.
 
Back at it.

Sorry for the long delay, kids and work meant no time for the build. Thankfully the holidays have given me a little time in the garage.

Not much is new but I have done a little: Made a custom bracket for the bottom mount headlight, got a Sparck Moto universal wiring harness through DCC and have attempted a small start on the wiring. I am no electrical expert and this is by far the most daunting part for me, so what would take a couple hours for someone who knows what they're doing will take me 10 times that many hours, but that's part of the learning process and why I'm doing the bike. Got my tail section all cut and fitted, still need to work on actual seat pad attachment but I have some ideas. Got a nice new Rick's charging system and have the motor side covers off the get vapour blasted and shined up to match the top end that's already all cleaned up.
 

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Looking good. Lemme know if you have any questions about the hookup. You won't need the purple wire on the bike and you'll need to save the charging circuit (white, yellow, and pink wires from the alternator) from the existing harness, but everything else shouldn't be too bad.
 
Sonreir said:
Looking good. Lemme know if you have any questions about the hookup. You won't need the purple wire on the bike and you'll need to save the charging circuit (white, yellow, and pink wires from the alternator) from the existing harness, but everything else shouldn't be too bad.

Sparck Moto: Your harness is great! The only thing is the universal harness I got from DCC would have been nice if it came with a bunch of extra bullets to fit yours so I could make the connections easier, but a quick trip to Lordco Auto Parts for some bullet connectors fixed that up, just yours with the clear sleeves are nicer than the cheap blue plastic style is all...

I have just started with the left handlebar (the easier one I think since it's all lights and signals and can be tested with just a battery hooked up). Since I know relatively nothing about electrical I am a little stumped with the horn button on my universal EMGO switch, it has a brown, black (with a jacket and blade type connector already on it?) and the high beam wire soldered to the switch for the horn and flash-to-pass buttons on the bottom. This is going to sound stupid, but is a horn wired just like a light to complete the circuit or what is the note in the Sparck Moto downloaded instructions that says "the button should be setup to ground out the connection and complete the circuit"? Anyways, with me tester on the horn connections on the wiring harness I have yet to try a connection that produces a voltage there when I press the horn button... time to keep trying. I know when I figure it out, it will have been a simple change.


These are the only two wires not yet hooked up from the left handlebar switch. The sleeved blade connector on the black came like that. I added the bullet to the brown wire to test things out.
 

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Hard to say for certain without seeing a diagram for the switch, but assuming the horn button is a two-wire type, one wire should go to the pink horn wire in the harness and the other switch wire should be grounded. The horn's second wire, the black one, should be connected to a black wire in the harness (I usually use the thicker of the two at the head).

So the flow of electricity can be pictured like this:
Power -> Horn -> Button -> Ground
 
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