VT500 Ascot. Desert Tracker

Cursh

Loves Stock Airboxes
Hey, Folks.

My neighbor's been riding this bike for the past year and tried to sell it once she got a car. I always liked the look of it and knew it ran better than my CB360 (which doesn't/hasn't in a long time) so when it hit an asking price of $750 I swooped in and grabbed it. Looking these up it seems like I'd benefit from digging up an OEM exhaust and I'm interested in simplifying somethings and adding directionals. As it stands, it runs well and I'm mostly not effing with it. I picked the bike up on Friday and spent the weekend doing a little cosmetic work/ more securely attaching things that hadn't been bolted on well/correctly (aftermarket tail light).


I kept trying to take a photo in front of the bike with my photo timer. I guess tech has surpassed my capabilities.

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I got it into my head that I wanted to do a desert color scheme, so I grabbed some plastidip over the long weekend and got to work. This is a 6 out of 10 paint job, but I get to see if I like it long enough to make it permanent and I can fiddle with it without feeling like I'm messing up a good thing.

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Should have thought through the wind in that drop cloth. It caught on the front of the tank, making the dip less secure. oh well =).

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Original goal was to stencil on cacti, but in sharpie sketching cacti to make a stencil from I decided that I'd be better off just hand doing them with a paint pen. I used the Gold sharpie (I don't even know if it's paint) AZ will see if it stands up to sun...

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I miss the OEM number plate that the ascot sported so I head into use the ULS Laser Cutters at TechShop Chandler to fab something up.

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The original concept is to through cut the numbers and sandwich a painted panel between the cladding and the number plate to get the primer red color. While thinking through the art I realize that etching the numbers would make a custom mask in the acrylic protectant sheet that I can use to spray quickly. It works well enough and cleans up easily with nail polish remover and a cue tip.

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And there she is all back together. The headlight is a bit small for the bracket and off center. I made a number plate to play with that asymmetry and it was a bit big/ didn't pan out. I might chop the top off and use it anyway to cover up that rats nest of a wiring job. The PPO clearly wasn't an electrical guru.

For now, I'm riding it because it runs. I'd like to run rear directionals in the side panels (a strip down to the shock on each side) and fab up a custom rear light with bent white acrylic. You should be able to see red LEDs through that day or night.

I'd also like to work in more primer red to complete the color scheme. Thinking the whole front fender and the seat could be the same color. Ideally the seat will have a humpectomy and the back half of the side panels can be exposed. Either way. Fun project and I've got less than $1000 in it after title, tax, and insurance and paint.

I'm hoping that a running bike will give me the freedom to crack the cases on the CB360, clean the bike up from the frame up and put together a working project after 8 years of tinkering with a nearly running Moto.
 
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Still need to mount the front number plate and start going over the PO's questionable wiring practices. Probably do an oil change and a fork rebuild.
 
It's 120 degrees here in Phoenix. I'm glad to have an insulated garage (even if it's not Climate controlled. I picked up a few parts to keep this thing running. New scorpion AGM battery oil and filter, new petcock, new grips.

Pulling off the old parts revealed how shitty one of the POs was at wiring. I looks like they tried to slap an new turn signal wiring harness on top of the bikes factory wiring. A lot of housing wire nuts and bare twisted wire wrapped in electrical tape. I performed a shoddy wiring-Ectomy. There was a switch wired to the fan (guessing this used to connect through the absent instrument cluster?). The fan works, but the switch didn't do anything (hooked it directly to 12V to test)

Looks like the PO gave up putting the carb boots back on as well. I fixed that and hope this offsets some of the popping on decel. Looking into a cone engineering quieter replacement muffler to fix the exhaust side issues (assuming it still will be a bit off.)

I also threw my CB360 speedo on for speed and fuel tracking. I'm looking at late 80s instruments to use. There is an ascot cluster on eBay, but I'm not trying to spend $300 on something that isn't a resto.

I'm thinking of recovering the seat in red to match the numbers. Thoughts? My first reaction is that it's too much red.
 

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