CB350 Sly... Ton-less

[surffly]

what excel rim did you use on the rear?
im looking for excel rims to work with a stock rear and GT750 front and dont want to spend $200+ per rim

[overdraft]

what excel rim did you use on the rear?
im looking for excel rims to work with a stock rear and GT750 front and dont want to spend $200+ per rim

ya, i got shouldered excels from buchanan's... they were pricey, but nice... in retrospect i wish i'd tried the ones from mikesxs though... the price differential is probably worth taking a chance...
buchanans:
http://www.buchananspokes.net/products/excel_shouldered_aluminum_rims.asp
mikesxs:
http://www.mikesxs.net/products-56.html#products

[overdraft]

this entry is all about bolts...

i took out the rusty caliper bolts and got new oem ones... but then i stumbled over these really cool chrome plated ones!



so the caliper will end up looking pretty nice after blast and paint... here's the chrome bolt beside the oem one...



and while we're talking bolts, i was at a buddy's place and he was working on his ferrari (ya, he pisses me off too!) and he showed me one of the bolts he took out... and the freakin' logo is forged into the bolt head! no wonder those cars are so expensive!

[VonYinzer]

That is awesome. God I love Ferraris. What does he have?

[overdraft]

That is awesome. God I love Ferraris. What does he have?

456GT... i fear for it... buddy likes to do 'interesting' things to his cars... he put a lotus elan engine in his bug eye sprite, a chev v6 in his volkswagen campervan, converted his corvette to propane and put a northstar v8 in his lotus esprit...

[VonYinzer]

I like this guy already...

[overdraft]

ok, tank.... i always loved the shape of the old suzuki gs450 tanks and thought that they'd make a great cafe tank. i knew i didn't have the chops to build a tank from scratch, but i also didn't want to just buy a 'cafe' tank so i started looking for a 450 tank. fans of the tank will know that there are indents on the sides to receive the badges, but in my searching i found that the non-imported gsx250 has the identical shaped tank but without the indents. furthermore, i found new old stock ones in asia for a reasonable price! will it fit? i didn't know but i ordered it up anyway...



well, was nice to know there's no rust or junk in my tank but it didn't fit... the tunnel wasn't deep enough so i took a ball pean hammer to it... ugly but you'll never see it...



and the front was too narrow to get over the mounting rubbers, so i made a kind of spreader tool that bent the front of the tank apart to fit onto the frame...



i set up some rubber bumpers in some spare holes in the frame to support the back end so now its fully supported with rubber, but i have yet to find a way to attach it....

[overdraft]

well, the side stand used to fold up against a rubber pad on the muffler... now that the exhaust is on the right it swung too far up and looked like it would interfere with the shifter...



so i drilled into the pivot of the stand so it could take a small piece of stainless rod. now by filing the rod to length i can control exactly where the side stand parks...



and now it's out of the way of the shifter!

[overdraft]

part of my memory of the bike i had as a kid was the black tips on the ends of the levers... turns out they're available as a spare part! popped onto the stock clutch lever nicely, but was a bit more work to get on the modern brake lever... however eventually i got it on and now i can keep the old skool look that i remember!

[stonenck]

awesome build, love the attention to the details

[CrescentSon]

Agreed, high quality work man.

[overdraft]

stonenck, crescentson, thanks guys!

rear brake linkage... so ya, everyone has to deal with this if they're going with passenger peg rearsets eh? so i just love woodcraft rearsets... have them on my race bike and my streetbike so i wanted them on the café too. i thought it would be one of the few select 'modern' touches on the bike. (i want the overall look to be pretty traditional so i don't want to put TONS of modern stuff on) but as we all know, on modern rearsets the eye on the brake pedal pushes UP to actuate a hydraulic cylinder and we need to convert that force to a horizontal one. so i did the standard 'flip the rear brake arm' on the brake panel so that the pedal is pulling it above the swing arm instead of below. then i found an r6 shift lever at the wreckers like this one...



and went to work on it so that it would mate up to the woodcraft brake lever...



so now it rotates around the peg with the brake lever but it's locked on by a nut and bolt (or maybe i tapped it, can't remember yesterday, nevermind a couple of weeks ago!) through the eye....



and i really wanted to avoid the 'bent brake rod' look that people use to get around the shock so i put the bend in the upper part of the brake lever so i have a straight shot back to the brake arm...

[overdraft]

i wanted to keep the original tach but with the clip ons i needed to find some way to mount it... so i fired up the FnH mill and made a bracket that would have it tucked into the triples...




but it turned out the cable ran into the back of the headlight bucket, so back to the metal supermarket for more stock and back to the mill...




and the final piece now tips the tach forward a bit so the cable clears the headlight!

[HerrDeacon]

Nicely done! Looks good.

[overdraft]

i got a HUGE chrome headlight bucket from mikesxs... just the look i was going for, plus lots of room inside for my lame wiring efforts (i'm electronically challenged) and i drilled it for the high beam indicator that i robbed from my old busted plastic headlight bucket.

i ordered the standard cheapie headlight ears and when the arrived i wasn't too impressed with the quality so i ordered the aluminum ones... so meanwhile i'm doing a mock up and i put the headlight on with the cheapies, and now the alloy ones are here and i'm not so sure i don't like the cheapies better?

what do you guys think?