mitchn06's 1983 Honda CB550SC Nighthawk Bobber Build

This thread will be of my completed 1983 Honda Nighthawk 550 bobber build. Just so all of you already know, I have since completed the build and sold the bike. This will be more of a pictures thread due to it already being done and out the door!!
To start off, I found the bike 3 hours away for $175 and picked it up on a work night. A co-worker of mine came with me to pick it up and to keep me company, we sang the crap out of Little Big Town’s rendition of the Crawdad song the whole way back. It was a blast.

Here is the bike upon picking it up.



Teardown Beginning!!!



I started building this bike out of our townhome garage. It was pretty small, but bigger than my last garage.

Sportster Tank mock up


Decided to cut the whole Tail section off and make it rigid (bad idea)


Mocking up bars and such with the tank
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Took the bike to my buddy’s auto body shop to do some welding and grinding


We achieved the rigid suspension by welding two bars directly onto the top of the swingarm to the downtube frame


I decided this build was going to be much more efficient with my own welder


A Little more progress!!


Rebuilt Carbs




Inspected CDI, reflowed bad solder and PCB clear coated it


Carbs, pods, and seating area done up

I am a big guy at 6’4 on this bike. Mocking up footpeg mounts

We bought a house and I finally built a moto work table, so much easier on the knees and back

License Plate Stuff


Custom foot peg mounts/linkage


Slave Master

OK, so I never got around to painting everything and making it look all pretty, so it turned into a rat bobber




I learned a lot of stuff over the whole process of building this. It was a fun project. It was my only bike for the summer as I also was rebuilding the engine in my dirt bike (top and bottom, expensive, and no funds.) it was great riding to and from work, but I decided to go for a morning ride out in the country one day and it was terrible, I got 60 miles out of town and had to turn back due to lack of suspension. I was in pain. So I sold it to fund my XR650R rebuild Funny enough, later that year I ended up having back surgery. Coincidence??