1982 Honda CB900f Supersport cafe/brat build

MrVito

New Member
So I recently picked up a 1982 CB900f Supersport in decent condition, but covered with the most gaudy crap that you could imagine. Sadly the wasp style cone had the windscreen shattered, and was cracked above the headlight. I'll just let the pictures of the day I brought her home speak for themselves.

























 
Clearly she was not the prettiest bike in the world, but that is easily remedied. Just pull all of the offending parts off of the bike.




Then try to scrape most of the stickers off of the tank....




Already she's looking much better




Clearly we won't need the mounting tabs for the side covers anymore






And the CV carbs are known to be a pain to deal with, so we'll just get rid of those..




as well as the stock battery box and electronics bracketry

 
She'll be getting some more cutoff wheel and grinder attention this afternoon, and possibly some welding. Waiting on a few packages from DCC to show up for now.
 
Subbed. I'm waiting like a vulture for parts to fall off the bike and be sold.

Looks ambitious! Smart move on the carb swap.
 
Not a whole lot done yesterday. Put a set of drag bars on until I can find the right steel to make some clip ons. Ditched the original lights/blinkers/horn control in favor of a smaller unit for lights and horn only. I'm still not sure if I'm going to run a horn or not, but if I do, it can't be the stock one (well it should be stock two, but there's only one left and it's broken). Disassembled and stripped the layers of white, blue, more white, then black paint off of the clutch control lever. I then beat the clutch lever itself flat, it had developed a bit of a bend from being dropped in the past it seems.

Got all of my controls mounted, along with the new grips and bar end mirrors on the drag bars. The 1.9" tach was pretty straightforward to mount, just used some rubber grommets to act as vibration isolators, and she's sitting at the right height. The setup isn't quite exactly what I am looking to do, but it will work well enough for a mockup build and test rides. Speedometer, carbs, and muffler should be here this week.

I still need to build and place the battery box, which I'm debating two positions for, either on top of the swingarm, or run an AGM battery and lay it on its side tucked underneath the swingarm. Then it'll be time to cut off her tail, weld on the hoop, install the tail light, tuck away electronics, make a seat, put on the new muffler, install the Keihin CR's, tune the new carbs, make my clip ons if/when I get around to it, and then take the whole bike apart again for paint, polish, cleanup etc.

 
Well, Saturday was time to get cracking.




First cuts were decent, but I came to find out that the frame had a second layer of piping inside of it as bracing.




Several measurements and a few cuts later, the hoop was ground down at the straight ends and tapped into the original frame. I had ordered frame slugs from DCC, but both ends were WAY too big to be used.




A little bit of welding and grinding later....




I figured since the hoop was on, I should go ahead and make a template for a seat pan




After a bit more cutting, it's looking just right!




Then I realized, I can't weld aluminum to steel, so I'd have to make something on the frame to bole the aluminum pan to. So I added a recessed crossbar near the hoop, (the other two at the transition from flat to curve we actually added later).




I also cut off and filled the bolt holes forward of the upper shock mount, near the rear corner of the triangle. Then I made an electronics plate to tuck most of the sparky bits up under the seat.




and a view of the electronics tray from above (this pic was taken before the two additional seat pan brackets were added)...




So progress was slow today, spent the end of the day pulling the header off, the stainless 4-1 was "clearanced" to go around the oil drain bolt, and over the years of neglect by the previous owner, the drain plug has been rounded off, and appears to have welded itself to the pan. I'm trying to decide if I want to yank the engine at this point just to extricate that bolt, or try tilting the bike forward, and draining the rest of the oil from the filter mount, suggestions?
 
I may have to sacrifice a socket to the motorcycle gods, next day I have some free time I'm going to hammer on and then tack weld an ever so slightly too small socket, and go at it with a breaker bar. Worst case scenario, I get a new oil pan.
 
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