shaggy66670
New Member
POST TEN IS WHERE THE CONVERASION STARTS AND REAL CAFE BUILD STARTS
Hi!
Summer 2012 I bought what looked like a beaten, well used but far from neglected Honda Superdream for £370. Over the long and cold 35 years of it's life in Northern England I'm sure it had some horror stories to tell. I purchased the well described 'JUNK bike' from ebay, located around 190 miles from my place at the time. I was living with two friends in a pretty decent sized house and massive empty garage with electricity and heating on the south coast UK (Portsmouth) - PERFECT TIME to get on the ol'e restoring/customising wagon!
My thoughts were to start out easy with a standard simple engine as my mechanical skills consisted of taking things apart after a doobie snack; thinking woooooooow thats how that shit works, then not putting it back together.
as luck would have it mechanically the bike was almost the nuts! great compression, clean carbs and grey - ish firing end of the spark plugs, decent sprockets and chain decent amount of tread...
I flushed the engine replaced the oil and oil filter, cleaned the air filter.... took it for a blast! It was rattly, sluggish, heavy, old and had hardly any response from braking. - I loved it! (freaking out a little over the brakes though)
Planned a ride with a friend on his surprisingly quick Virago 125, we booked a couple of weeks off work, set our sights on Wales, Lake district and Scotland... safe to say before the ride out we both had a bit of work to do on our HOGS.
I spent I think two solid days cleaning it up, curing any rusty and battered parts, tightening screws and bolts, a quick paint job with some Iron Maiden stencils on the tank and side panels and I was pretty much good to go, apart from realising the MOT would run out half way through the two weeks spent on the road, my friend came round to pick it up and take it to his uncles servicing garage to get it MOT'd for a couple cases of beer. he phoned me a few days later saying the front brake calliper was pretty dodgy and would take him a day or two to clean up but other than that would sail through the MOT.
Got the Honda cb250n back in time for the road trip.
aaaaannd this be it! my steed I trusted to take me around country....
Picture one is a day before the second picture.
we set off early on a LUSH sunny morning and rolled back into our town almost exactly two weeks later, looking forward to a sofa, some proper hot dinners and not sleeping in a leaking teepee - sounds like a complaint but we did appreciated every minute, nothing like riding through the mountains of the Lake District and Wales with nothing in front other than the sun bathed tarmac and your bars.
Towards the end of summer the bike had been ridden to its extreme, all over the south coast of the UK, blasted all the cobwebs out but It became painfully obvious it needed a bit of TLC.
I then came across Cafe Racers...
Hi!
Summer 2012 I bought what looked like a beaten, well used but far from neglected Honda Superdream for £370. Over the long and cold 35 years of it's life in Northern England I'm sure it had some horror stories to tell. I purchased the well described 'JUNK bike' from ebay, located around 190 miles from my place at the time. I was living with two friends in a pretty decent sized house and massive empty garage with electricity and heating on the south coast UK (Portsmouth) - PERFECT TIME to get on the ol'e restoring/customising wagon!
My thoughts were to start out easy with a standard simple engine as my mechanical skills consisted of taking things apart after a doobie snack; thinking woooooooow thats how that shit works, then not putting it back together.
as luck would have it mechanically the bike was almost the nuts! great compression, clean carbs and grey - ish firing end of the spark plugs, decent sprockets and chain decent amount of tread...
I flushed the engine replaced the oil and oil filter, cleaned the air filter.... took it for a blast! It was rattly, sluggish, heavy, old and had hardly any response from braking. - I loved it! (freaking out a little over the brakes though)
Planned a ride with a friend on his surprisingly quick Virago 125, we booked a couple of weeks off work, set our sights on Wales, Lake district and Scotland... safe to say before the ride out we both had a bit of work to do on our HOGS.
I spent I think two solid days cleaning it up, curing any rusty and battered parts, tightening screws and bolts, a quick paint job with some Iron Maiden stencils on the tank and side panels and I was pretty much good to go, apart from realising the MOT would run out half way through the two weeks spent on the road, my friend came round to pick it up and take it to his uncles servicing garage to get it MOT'd for a couple cases of beer. he phoned me a few days later saying the front brake calliper was pretty dodgy and would take him a day or two to clean up but other than that would sail through the MOT.
Got the Honda cb250n back in time for the road trip.
aaaaannd this be it! my steed I trusted to take me around country....
Picture one is a day before the second picture.
we set off early on a LUSH sunny morning and rolled back into our town almost exactly two weeks later, looking forward to a sofa, some proper hot dinners and not sleeping in a leaking teepee - sounds like a complaint but we did appreciated every minute, nothing like riding through the mountains of the Lake District and Wales with nothing in front other than the sun bathed tarmac and your bars.
Towards the end of summer the bike had been ridden to its extreme, all over the south coast of the UK, blasted all the cobwebs out but It became painfully obvious it needed a bit of TLC.
I then came across Cafe Racers...