1971 Honda CL350: Staying in the family.

ZMagic97

New Member
First off: I have no idea how long this project will take me. I am hoping to have it done by Christmas, but it may take longer since I work ALL of October and will be in Maine and Boston for 1/3 of November. Plus, it's around the holidays.

So, the bike: it's a 1971 Honda CL350 that I paid $0 for. Yup...no cost minus getting it from Chicago to Arizona. Nortmally this would be an issue...but I was going there in March to move my grandfather to Sun City, Az and at the time I had a moving truck and room for the bike, so it came back to Arizona with us. The bike's prior owner was my grandfather's sister named Ann, and she was married to my grandfather's best friend Bill who owned it prior to his passing. To the best of my knowledge, it has been in the family since it was bought new.

I got it home in Mid March but about 2 weeks later I had to go on a long work schedule, so nothing got done since I was only off on Sunday nights while working 12 hour shifts. During this time I noticed the VIN on the bike and title were slightly off, obviously a simple error was made.

Fast forward to this past Friday: I took the bike to the local MVD office for inspection to get the title fixed and in my name (since it was out of state with a title issue a 3rd party office, which I highly trust, said the offical MVD needed to do an inspection to give me a title). Once I arrived, they said they don't do inspections but gave me a number. When I got the the counter I got a title with no problems; I didn't even need to trailer the bike there.

I moved the bike to my shed after getting home and 36 hours later started to tear into it. I feel like I got a good start with about 90 minutes of work, but I know a lot still lies ahead. I am updating my progress both here and on Youtube (under the same name, ZMagic97) and am excited to share my progress.

Everything has come off with no issues, and there is almost zero rust. Still turns over, battery was taken out a long time ago with the fuel, and oil is still in it. I'm impressed with the conidition in which it is in.

Here's a few photos:

These two are when I got it. First one was the first day at my house, next one after a quick wash.



Here is is about 12 hours ago:


If anyone is interested in videos, here's my Youtube video. I will update the channel with a new video every week progress is made.
http://youtu.be/eBu-avgns8M
 
Well, I may try and start it this weekend since it turns over easy and oil is still in it. I may just replace the engine seals and do no more than that since I'm starting to think that, "if it's not broken, don't fix it" is the best policy.

Hopefully tonight I'll put the switch in my parts washer and get it going so I don't have greasy parts all over the place. That should make the workplace a little easier to deal with since I won't be dodging dirty parts.
 
For a first build I fele like it's going well. I'm almost done with teardown, but I know that's kinda of the easiest part.

I need start start looking at what I need for upgrades on the wiring and what color and seat I want. I still want something kinda slim, but still want some comfort and would like it to still flip up for easy battery access.

This is from last weeks update video I did. I'm leaving in a few minutes to go camping, so no time to take, upload, and post current pictures right now. This should do for now:

As you can tell from the photo, no build is fun without some PBR.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3tQ5f4Tnao
 
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