'Trash to Treasure' Honda CB250n Superdream convert to CB400n 'TON UP' Cafe

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...
 

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Learning about the Cafe Racer was an inspiration, how people would have built their rides in their sheds in 60's Britain with whatever they could get their hands on, on a Budget, with an imagination and sense...

I decided to focus on the Tank first as I thought it could be one of the main culprits for future mechanical issues, things such as the layer of rust inside the tank travelling through the shitty fuel filter into the carbs and blocking the jets. I stripped the Maiden artwork, the green/black paint all the way to almost bear metal with elbow grease, Motorhead and a couple beers.

I used around 16 litres of coca cola to remove the rust inside, I shook the tank around like crazy over and over, flushing it and repeating, then started adding boiling Water and lemon juice to the mix and leaving to settle, this technique worked perfectly on getting rid of all the savage rust over a 24hr period, I flushed it out completely with my finger over half of the end of a hose pipe and a dried it with a hair dryer.

next step was to paint the tank, I headed to Wilkinsons home ware shop and bought Grey Prima, Clear Lacquer and neon orange spray cans, at this point I had only been set back around £35 including all the coke from ALDI.

I stripped off the fuel tap, fuel cap, the rubber grommets and stuffed rags into the openings; spray painted that bitch right up while blasting out some Zeppelin!

Wasn't ecstatic with how the tank turned out, should have spent more time and beers on the prep work before painting. Didn't hate the colour all that much though.
 

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The next stage was to put the tank back together quick enough so the rust wouldn't return, I cleaned the fuel filter replaced the rubber O ring in the fuel cap polished up the metal retaining clip for the fuel cap, re assembled and filled with Petrol. almost as good as new :D

the next stage was to see what had made it's way into the carbs...

*Apologies for the less than entertaining amount of pictures* this was all done quite a while back, the present build and conversion on this bike has been filled with picture taking (before and afters) which will be accompanying these posts soon*
 

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reason for the choke cable, throttle opening/closing cables still being attached is that I wanted to really get in there and see how all the springs and junk worked together under the general use... The carbs were a little grubby but nothing the carburettor cleaner from Halfords couldn't blast away, inside and out.

re assembled the Tank and carbs back into the frame then set to Painting the side panels, ORANGE.

bought some mean looking handle bars to lower my riding position a little, (Cafe Racer inspired)

Bought some fibre glass heat wrap for the exhaust (for the look)

Bought the fork gaiters (fork boot) to beef out the slim looking forks at the front..

Ripped off the non working tacho and speedo

this is how it looked all mocked up
 

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As the time in the house with the friends and the garage started nearing the end I decided to leave the mods there and just get it all back together. Tax had run out on it and it started playing up in the cold weather, life became super hectic so I decided to invest in a reliable everyday bike, 2009 Suzuki VanVan, awesome deal from a friend as it only set be back 1K. good investment as long as I don't crash it or get it stolen. so now the Honda can be off the road as long as it takes to get it exactly how I wanted it...

the next few months the Honda sat like this in my dads girlfriends garage...
 

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...While I was like brrrrrrrraaapppp brap brappp braaappppp wooooooo BRAAAAAAP ...
 

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Maritime said:
Nice work so far, I like the orange, but I am biased, both my bikes are orange.

Cheers buddy! it struck me a bit too much like *look at me, look at meeeeeee* kind of orange though
 
Finally after a few months I pulled my finger out, got the bike taxed and MOT'd and took the girlfriend around the Isle of Wight for the day... worked like a dream... (last picture my little sister testing it out and finally giving her seal of approval over the colour) BUT it's not a cafe racer just yet!
 

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OK so here is how it goes, bike was running great last summer all the way through winter until I thought in December, ahh man I should probably put some oil in this soon, then January came around, I was probably hitting 55ish at the very most on the M27 trying to get to work on time; the engine started to seize up, but stupidly I ran the bike for about 2 miles with rattles and shit before getting to work and it died. this is where the conversion to the 400n comes in and almost where I'm at now...

I spent a day around three months ago stripping the motorcycle all the way down to the frame as I'm getting it powder coated, I found pretty bodged electrics and SHIT loads of rust...
 

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I wheeled the rolling chassis down to my mechanic in Fareham where he would sort out the powder coating - literally all of the bike will be covered in a satin black powder coat on the frame wheels and forks. The only thing left will be the chrome Handle bars and brake disk at this point.

The image in my mind for this bike is a MEAN looking cafe racer built from the ground up with care and patience almost completely satin/matt black and chrome.

I asked him to source a new swingarm as mine was rusted almost right through - bit freaky seeing that.

I said to him there wasn't any rush on it as I wanted to do a complete over haul on the cb250 engine that would take me a few weeks - two and a half months later and he is only just putting the rolling chassis back together lol, takes his time but brilliantly sound mechanic.
 
SO many people said to me if I'm planning on keeping this bike then I should go all out and make it more powerful, so that it would actually 'do the ton' if I wanted it to.

I managed to source a CB400NE engine and carbs from a guy literally down the road in Portchester, for £185 he delivered the parts right to my garage door, he told me the engine had been sat in his garage for the last 2 years but the engine doesn't want anything and should be a plug in and go kind of thing.... I wasn't up for just taking his word even though he seemed genuine, so I took the carbs apart to find brand new floats and spotless bowls, took the rocker cover off to find brand new gaskets and beautiful looking cam chain and sprocket... I was happy, and started painting some of the engine in matt black with heat proof engine enamel...

all I need to do now is polish it up like CRAZY! AND IT"S GOT A KICK START WOOO!
 

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The focus again turns to the tank, it was stored for a little while with half a tank of petrol so the rust made a come back...
 

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So I once again began to restore the tank with twice as much effort as last time.

I started by stripping the MANY layers of spray paint, prima and lacquer. firstly by sanding down the first layer then smothering it in 'Nitro Mors'
 

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then came the stubborn spots so I set up the electric sander ( I'd hate to think of how many hours I've added up in life sanding things down by hand in the past )
 

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the next morning I cracked on with the Primer
 

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Finally the Lacquer :) let the tank dry for 24 hours then got to the rust inside the tank, again with litres and litres of cheap coke, lemon juice lots of shaking and settling and flushing then finally the new fuel cap, fuel tap, grommets and fresh clean fuel
 

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