Well I am totally new with Cafe Racers or anything mechanical but here is my bike and it's story.
In the fall 2005 I went and bought myself a brand new SV650S. Not one week later I meet a girl, who soon after becomes my wife. Soon after that come baby number one... And then the house... And then baby number 2. I leave the military so I can be home or at least in the western hemisphere than 3 months out of the year... I wind up having to sell the SV and my car to keep the family afloat so to speak. I was pretty bummed about the whole thing. My new job was far and since we were sharing a car I was having to bum rides left and right to get to work.
Then along comes this beast in the local classifieds for 400$. 1971 CB175. Been sitting in a barn since the early 1990s, no title, some surface rust, seized carbs, rotted exhaust, 37 year old tires, a few electrical glitches... But hey I have a garage now and this is the cheapest complete bike I have seen in months so let's take a chance. I spend about 2 weeks cleaning it up, tracing down the faulty connections, rebuilding the carbs and installing new cheapo tires (took me a while and about 5 tubes to figure that one out!!). I left the rotting exhaust on there because I'm broke, and go up a jet size to compensate. I then have a semi presentable and functional vintage motorcycle to toy around with.
I flipped the shifter around and rode around on the rear pegs which was actually not bad. I couldn't use the rear brake this way unless reaching my foot foward in thoses tense situations, but between engine braking and the twin leading shoes of fury I was fine for most of the time. I could tuck in and maintain 115-120KM/H on the backroads with this thing, the little engine screaming at almost 9000RPM the whole time. I had a lot of fun driving this thing around. Something about redlining every gear and pushing this thing to the edge routinely was a nice departure from riding the SV which was a bit too quiet and stable to provide rewarding feedback unless I was going way too fast.
I beat the shit out of it all summer and put about 6000KM on it commuting to work and screaming around mountain roads. It still returned ~70MPG and was rock solid, rain, shine, hail... Now I am stripping it down to the frame to get rid of the rust and will be doing this up as a mild cafe bike. I am trying to work-out some rearsets right now, I bought the pegs and brake pedal from an early(drum brake) EX500 on ebay I will try to adapt them somehow. I'll see if I can document this 15$ experiment if it works out.. It will also be getting a new exhaust, pod filters, re-jet. I love the look of clubman bars but will probably settles for something with a bit less reach foward.
This site looks great. I'm going to have lots of questions!!!!!!! Will post more pictures as things develop.
Cheers,
Guy
In the fall 2005 I went and bought myself a brand new SV650S. Not one week later I meet a girl, who soon after becomes my wife. Soon after that come baby number one... And then the house... And then baby number 2. I leave the military so I can be home or at least in the western hemisphere than 3 months out of the year... I wind up having to sell the SV and my car to keep the family afloat so to speak. I was pretty bummed about the whole thing. My new job was far and since we were sharing a car I was having to bum rides left and right to get to work.
Then along comes this beast in the local classifieds for 400$. 1971 CB175. Been sitting in a barn since the early 1990s, no title, some surface rust, seized carbs, rotted exhaust, 37 year old tires, a few electrical glitches... But hey I have a garage now and this is the cheapest complete bike I have seen in months so let's take a chance. I spend about 2 weeks cleaning it up, tracing down the faulty connections, rebuilding the carbs and installing new cheapo tires (took me a while and about 5 tubes to figure that one out!!). I left the rotting exhaust on there because I'm broke, and go up a jet size to compensate. I then have a semi presentable and functional vintage motorcycle to toy around with.
I flipped the shifter around and rode around on the rear pegs which was actually not bad. I couldn't use the rear brake this way unless reaching my foot foward in thoses tense situations, but between engine braking and the twin leading shoes of fury I was fine for most of the time. I could tuck in and maintain 115-120KM/H on the backroads with this thing, the little engine screaming at almost 9000RPM the whole time. I had a lot of fun driving this thing around. Something about redlining every gear and pushing this thing to the edge routinely was a nice departure from riding the SV which was a bit too quiet and stable to provide rewarding feedback unless I was going way too fast.
I beat the shit out of it all summer and put about 6000KM on it commuting to work and screaming around mountain roads. It still returned ~70MPG and was rock solid, rain, shine, hail... Now I am stripping it down to the frame to get rid of the rust and will be doing this up as a mild cafe bike. I am trying to work-out some rearsets right now, I bought the pegs and brake pedal from an early(drum brake) EX500 on ebay I will try to adapt them somehow. I'll see if I can document this 15$ experiment if it works out.. It will also be getting a new exhaust, pod filters, re-jet. I love the look of clubman bars but will probably settles for something with a bit less reach foward.
This site looks great. I'm going to have lots of questions!!!!!!! Will post more pictures as things develop.
Cheers,
Guy
