1971 CB750 K1 Rider Resto (On the road again!)

Re: 1971 CB750 K1 Rider Resto

Edhaeuser,

Glad your posting your progress! Really interesting. Hope you can get as far as that gorgeous Italian CB750. My fathers second bike was a 1971 CB750 back when it was practically new and I just picked up my second bike this fall, a 1981 CB750. Planned on tunning it over the winter.

Thanks for that buffing link. I had spent hours polishing the engine casings with the 400 to 800 grit sandpaper followed by 00 and 0000 steel wool. A buffing attachment for my drill would be a lot quicker.
 
Re: 1971 CB750 K1 Rider Resto

DRTP said:
Edhaeuser,

Glad your posting your progress! Really interesting. Hope you can get as far as that gorgeous Italian CB750. My fathers second bike was a 1971 CB750 back when it was practically new and I just picked up my second bike this fall, a 1981 CB750. Planned on tunning it over the winter.

Thanks for that buffing link. I had spent hours polishing the engine casings with the 400 to 800 grit sandpaper followed by 00 and 0000 steel wool. A buffing attachment for my drill would be a lot quicker.

If you have an angle grinder, it will have a lot more speed at the wheel than your drill. I would use 6 to 8 inch buffing wheels. Make sure you use the right wheels for the right compounds and also make sure you have dedicated wheels for each compound. Don't mix them up!

Ed
 
Re: 1971 CB750 K1 Rider Resto

I have the frame and swing arm at the powdercoaters to get a fresh coat of Jet Black 70-80% powder. This is two steps down from the glossiest color they had. I'm hoping this color is close to the original shine. Unfortunatley, I will not get to see it until March because I leave this weekend for a 17 day stretch of working out of town.....The things we do to pay the bills and buy some toys.

I have been going through all the plated hardware and prepping it for zinc plating. Lots of degreasing and dressing with a wire wheel. Oh, and by the way, I recommend double gloves if you ever work with ZEP Industrial Purple Cleanser and Degreaser. It turns out I had pinholes in the thumb and for finger of one off my gloves....not good...this stuff is nasty.

I was also going to send off my spokes and nipples for replating but I decided against it. I am going to try two new sets of spokes from partsnmore and see how they are.

I had been debating what to do with the hubs. Paint with Duplicolor and clear coat, Powder coat, or polish and clear. I have decided that I am going to do a hybrid of bead blast finish and polishing just the outer flange of the hubs and clear over everything. So, the hubs are blasted and I have sanded the area where the spoke holes are with 400 and 800 grit and then a quick buff with emery compound. It has a nice satin sheen on the buffed area. I think it will look good when cleared with a semi-gloss or satin clear.

Here is a picture of the front hub before clear.

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Re: 1971 CB750 K1 Rider Resto

edhaeuser said:
My wife says I have too many bikes in the garage.....I just can't understand that. My 68 bonnie is on the lift in the upper corner of the photo. Not in picture is my sons BSA project and the CB750.

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My wife told me the same thing years ago.
My reply was "I guess that's why my first marriage ended in divorce - my ex wife said the same thing. "

She went in the house and came back out a couple of minutes later and said - "Hey! You weren't married before me so this IS your first marriage." My reply: " Exactly." I haven't heard a complaint since.
 
Re: 1971 CB750 K1 Rider Resto

Those parts are coming up a treat, getting a whole box full of freshly plated parts back will be quite satisfying I imagine
 
Re: 1971 CB750 K1 Rider Resto

jdfog2 said:
My wife told me the same thing years ago.
My reply was "I guess that's why my first marriage ended in divorce - my ex wife said the same thing. "

She went in the house and came back out a couple of minutes later and said - "Hey! You weren't married before me so this IS your first marriage." My reply: " Exactly." I haven't heard a complaint since.

Ha Ha Ha....I keep telling mine I don't have near as many bikes as she has dogs and cats.....She just shakes her head and rolls her eyes
 
Re: 1971 CB750 K1 Rider Resto

It seems that I take perverse pleasure in making old crusty chit look nice. Maybe I should have been a plastic surgeon. Ha, really.....not. I think the hubs came out OK. I ended up shooting clear Duplicolor high temp ceramic on the hubs because that's what I had around. The brake plate is polished but not cleared.

Before

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After

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Re: 1971 CB750 K1 Rider Resto

Well, I got home from my long work stretch yesterday afternoon. The first thing I did is go straight from the airport to the powdercoat guy to pick up my frame, swingarm, and stands. He had called me earlier and said that he did not have the black that I had requested. He had one step glossier and one step less glossy. So, I elected for the more satin sheen. It came out looking OK but I would have preferred the color that I had requested. The price was pretty decent though, I paid $140.00 for everything in the pictures. This is the first time that I have not painted a frame myself but it was hard not to have someone else powdercoat it for the price. He did all the degreasing and sandblasting. All I had to do was drop them off and pick them up. What a huge time saver.

the photos show a little more gloss than is really there.

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Re: 1971 CB750 K1 Rider Resto

Next up....I received my hardware back from the plater. It came out pretty decent, but there are a few parts that I will have to redo with my Caswell plating kit. I think this place was more of a volume operation as opposed to quality control. Only one piece is missing, the rear brake plate that fits over the two pins inside the rear brake assembly. I will see if they can come up with it, but I don't expect they will.

Here are some of the parts as delivered

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And sorting the parts out using the tracings and measurements of everything I sent in. It sure helped having everything organized before I sent them in. I had everything sorted by component in a few hours.

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Here is everything sorted out and bagged by component.

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Re: 1971 CB750 K1 Rider Resto

I ordered a lot of parts while I was on the road. More than I am going to list, but here are some pictures.

One of the reasons I parked the bike back in 1989 was the fact that it would randomly blow the main fuse. So I ordered a new wiring harness from partsnmore. This is going to be really nice to work with.

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More stuff

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New Avon Roadriders. 110/90/19 front and 120/90/18 rear

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Re: 1971 CB750 K1 Rider Resto

I ran into a roadblock. I was going to clean up, sandblast and powdercoat the lower tripple tree today. When I cleaned the grease of the bearing race I found this.....ugh. The race was destroyed which would not have been a big deal because I have an allballs tapered kit to put in. The nasty part is that the stem is chewed up and bent as well. I think the fact that the stem is bent is why the bearing assembly failed. Hmmm, I wonder if that happened when I endo'd the bike thirty years ago. :p


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Re: 1971 CB750 K1 Rider Resto

While looking for a new lower tree I decided to build the wheels. I discovered that All Balls included the wrong size bearings for the front wheel, but the rear was correct. I installed the bearings in the rear hub and laced up the rims. I had purchased the rims from David Silver Spares to try to save a few bucks. The front one was fairly decent but the rear is marginal. I decided to use them anyway. They look pretty good all built up. This is the first time I have laced up a rim since I worked in a bicycle shop back in the early eighties. The lacing was easy but I still need to true them up...that will probably take a while. Once I get new front bearings to install I will give it a go.

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Re: 1971 CB750 K1 Rider Resto

After heading off to work for a while, I got a little more time to work on the bike. First up was renewing the various bushings in the swingarm and then installing it on the frame.

I used a threaded rod with bearing/bushing drivers I got at Harbor Freight and they drew right in while turning the nuts.

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Same here with the shock absorber bushings.

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New swing arm collar from Service Honda:

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I borrowed the penny trick from someone else. I put the hooked end of the spring in the vice and bent the spring....inserting the pennies in the gap while bending. this was just enough pennies to slip the spring on.

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And the spring is on!

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Re: 1971 CB750 K1 Rider Resto

Next is the lower tree. You may recall that my original one was damaged by the lower race and had a bent steering tube. I picked up a used front end locally that was rough, but I was hoping to get some used parts from. I knew the steering stop was broken, but I figured I could weld it up.

Here is the process....The stop was not broken all the way off, but there was very little holding it on. I broke it off the rest of the way and ground some away to allow for more penetration of the weld.

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Getting ready to tack it on. It is held in place with a magnet.

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And here it is welded up before grinding and filing it back down.

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Here it is finished up and fresh out of the oven

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On the bike

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Re: 1971 CB750 K1 Rider Resto

OK, so here is an incomplete photo essay on my gauge rebuilding experience. I have no before pictures, but I'm sure you have seen old, tired, and crusty gauges. I started by removing the chrome backs and the rubber ring that the clamps go around to hold the gauges. This gave me access to the retaining rings. I started with a very small screwdriver and began to pry the bottom of the ring away from the housing....unfortunately, I did not take any pictures of this. I kept working around and switched to a larger screwdriver until I could separate the black housing from the back. There is a blue/green inner housing inside the black one....I separated these also

First photo is the inner housings after separating them from the outer black housing.....really rusty and crusty.

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the same housing repainted with the closest color I could find at the local Hardware store.

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I don't have a before picture of the outer housings, but one of them was bent up. I used a kitchen spoon and worked the dents out as well as I could. Then I bead blasted and powdercoated them.

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I saw this nifty trick on getting the needles off. It works great.

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One of my gauges had the typical broken light reflector

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So I glued it with epoxy and reinforced with a nail with the head cut off (arrow A) Disregard B and C..

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I bought new faces from EBay and painted my needles

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Now it is time to refit the rings to the housing. I tried to figure out a way to reseat the rings without marring them up. So.....after thinking about it I took a little trip to the local building supply store and picked up a 2 foot section of 4 inch pvc pipe and an end piece that had the perfect 4 inch inside diameter, which is the same at the outside diameter of the gauge. The 2 foot length allowed me to sit in a chair and set the pipe on the floor and turn the pipe as I worked my way around. I did have to grind 1/2 inch of the threads off the pipe so I could fit a hose clamp around the gauge ring. I used the hose clamp to help the ring maintain its shape.

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Then I used and aluminum drift and gently tapped the ring down around the housing. I went around twice, and rotated the clamp when I got to the area of the screw tightener because it did not press up tight to the ring in that area.

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The ring seated and the hose clamp removed

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The finished product

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