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Picked up a 1982 Honda MB5 a couple of days ago. Have always loved the look of these little bikes and just couldn't pass it up. Its in pretty rough shape, missing and broken parts but it runs. It looks like it spent its life off-road and it really shows. Going to be a bit of work but should be fun. I was intending to do a full restore, but due to the missing/broken parts, I think I'm going to cafe it but not cut anything so that I can return to stock if I can gather up the parts.
This will be a pretty slow project as I'm also still working on the 350, but I'd like to have it on the road by next summer.
I started mine in the garage and forgot that the door into the house was open. Smoke managed to clear in the garage pretty fast but the house stank for days. SWMBO was not amused. Can't think why.
Cool bike Deacon- I'll be following this one too. You should be able to polish the fender just like you would aluminum. It probably wont have the original luster, but will turn out really nice.
I didn't realize that Rich, thanks for the tip. There are a number of parts missing from the bike so for now I'm going to cafe it, but I'm going to be picking up all the missing parts as I find them over time so I can put it back to stock one day. Will keep that in mind for the front fender.
Can't for the life of me find an electronic version of the manual online anywhere, but lucked into finding a person that has a paper version locally. Hope to pick it up this week.
Last night I was going through the bike and evaluating what I have to work with, and noticed that the swingarm has a slight tweak to it. The metal is not creased or dented but one side is up a bit compared to the other. Going to try and straighten it somehow. If I don't have much luck with it I may be on the hunt for a replacement.
Re: Project DEET- Mini Smoker - Straightening Fun!
Got around to straightening the swing arm today. Went real well. I was initially going to straighten the swingarm off the bike, but couldn't come up with a good method given my limited tools and such. So I decided to to it on the bike. I first started by leveling the bike. My garage floor is not perfectly level (slopes to a drain in the middle of the floor) so I had to shim the center stand to make it perfect. With the bike level, it was pretty straightforward. I propped one arm up on a jack stand, heated the other arm with a torch and tapped it down until it was perfectly level with the other.
Another issue with the swingarm is the brake side shock mount was also bent outwards a bit causing the shock to be under a lateral stress. Used the torch again to help straighten them. You can see how much it was out in this pic. Shifter side was fine.
As a final check, put the rear wheel back on and was happy with the result. I know I took a before picture but can't find it for some reason. Here is the after, much better than before. Excuse the trolly jack lever handlebars, put them on to see how drag bars would feel
Re: Project DEET- Mini Smoker - Straightening Fun!
The next parts on the bike that are bent are the foot pegs and rear brake lever. I checked out the brake lever and its bent enough that it has a crack in it, so I won't be trying to fix that one. I'll be trying to find a used one somewhere. I may even do the same with the footpegs bar. Both pegs are bent and I may try straightening them but if it proves futile I'll just keep my eye out for a nice used one.
Took a big leap forward today towards that goal. When I bought the bike it never came with a title, just got a bill of sale. The bike was used as a dirt-only bike and wasn't plated, this is new ground for me as I've never bought a non-registered non-plated bike before. Went into DMV yesterday and they said that the VIN wasn't even in their system and that I would need the bill of sale from when the seller actually bought the bike. Called him and he never bothered to get one as he had no intentions of licensing it. Felt sick at this point, what to do. Called DMV and got a very helpful lady, she said since the bike wasn't registered you can just transfer it to your name under the 'purchase of an unregistered vehicle' rule. Went right in and got it done. Don't have a plate yet as the bike is not street legal. Was told when the bike is ready just need to get it inspected and I'll be good to go.
Very happy now as I've been holding off buying any parts or doing any major work on it until I had it in my name. Now let the fun begin
Before I can disassemble the bike I need to make the seat. Until I can gather up all the stock parts for a stock build, I'm going to give it a mild cafe treatment. So, I started in on making a fiberglass seat today.
Started off by taping up the tank. I always use this plastic duct tape. Very smooth which makes it very easy to pop the fiberglass off when its dry. You can see in this pic, I boxed in the rear section. This is to make it easier to attach the florist foam bricks I'll be using to shape the tail.
I then put a few layers of glass over this to give a start to the base. I'll add more layers for strength later when I do the hump.
Once cured, it easily popped off the duct tape. I just laid the foam bricks on for the picture to show how it will look when I begin to shape the tail.
Next up, shaping the tail. Not sure yet if I'll be going with a nice round hump or a more boxy one. I'm going to play around with it in Photoshop first to see what suits the bike better.
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