1970 CB450 "Silver Bullet" eye candy awaits....

[ARC Restorations]

Hey guys here's my intro post: http://www.dotheton.com/forum/index.php?topic=44408.0

This bike has been a two year project in the making and will hopefully be complete Spring of 2013. There is not a single bolt that wont be turned. The "Silver Bullet" is the realization of a CB450 dream I have had for years. 6 years ago I had the opportunity to purchase the most famous custom CB450 ever built (shown below), but the sale fell through my fingers at the last moment. It has haunted me since. I will now build a convertible solo and passenger version of this bike to my own specifications. Almost every part is, or has been made custom. The idea of this build is clean, low, sleek, and fast. I purchased the bike in Missouri for $350 and was surprised to find it was a complete bike that just needed to be put back together........and restored.......and customized......damn. The bike will be outfitted with tons of Dime City Cycles custom parts. Anyway here are some pictures to get you caught up on the build so far.

The bike I lost

My CB450 in rough build form. This will be the general shape of the bike.

gold1 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

gold4 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

DSCN4248 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

gold5 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

gold2 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

Building Custom Drag Pipes
1 Set 1948 Harley Davidson 1 3/4 Drag Pipes

DSCN3671 by IRILLUS, on Flickr
Trim to length

DSCN3673 by IRILLUS, on Flickr
Expand Pipe ends by 5mm

DSCN3677 by IRILLUS, on Flickr
Fit together your pieces. Baffle shown below.

DSCN3675 by IRILLUS, on Flickr
Mounted for testing, these will rumble deep

DSCN3680 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

Destroying Something Beautiful

DSCN4278 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

DSCN4280 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

Fresh Vintage GM "Cortez Silver" paint with black hockey stripes. Vintage tank warning decal.

DSCN4456 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

DSCN4464 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

DSCN4465 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

DSCN4466 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

DSCN4467 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

DSCN4470 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

DSCN4501 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

Lots and lots and lots of drilling......100% by hand

DSCN4299 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

DSCN4298 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

DSCN4297 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

DSCN4296 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

DSCN4291 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

Discovering how sweet a TC120 tank would look on the CB450. You can also get these tanks for $35-$50 all day long. Good alternative to expensive cafe or flat tracker tanks.

DSCN4282 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

DSCN4281 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

Restoring the side cover emblems. Still haven't decided if I am going to do the "450" letters in red or white.
1. Strip all paint, grease and tape mask desired areas.

DSCN4482 by IRILLUS, on Flickr
2. Ready for paint.

DSCN4480 by IRILLUS, on Flickr
3. Lay down high quality enamel paint. Let cure for 3 days.

DSCN4483 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

DSCN4485 by IRILLUS, on Flickr
4. Simply wipe the raised "greased" letters with a paper towel to reveal beautiful clean chrome lettering.

DSCN4487 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

DSCN4488 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

DSCN4503 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

DSCN4499 by IRILLUS, on Flickr

Here's a small progress update. Ordered a second K2 gas tank to create a custom matched solo cafe racer seat pan. The rendered tail design is shown below.

Decided to go with race red paint for the "450" side emblem lettering.

Rusty wheels now nice and shiny. SOS pads are a miracle product.

Beautiful heat dispersion bluing on the brake rotor. Love this picture.

Exhaust baffles fitted, compression reliefs cut.

Discovered my 450 has the all too common problem of sheared sprocket bolts. Only one was still in tact when it was last ridden......WOW.

Got the K5 gas tank in. I will use this to create a cafe seat like the one on my YR2 project shown below. Amazingly the areas of steel I need are the only ones not trashed LOL. It has been worked over hard, I believe it may be two different tanks soldered together. Anyway, picked the tank up on eBay for $20.

The Custom Yamaha YR2 Tail section

Got some things together finally today. Rear wheel, shocks, and cafe pan seat test mounted. The new cafe seat pan will be able to be removed and have the stock passenger seat put back on when I want a passenger. This will require heavy modification of both the frame and stock seat pan.

Starting to look clean. Brake drill outs turned out nice

Creating the Cafe Racer seat pan. Cut from 2nd Cb450 K4 gas tank.
Tracing the shape. Use a dry erase marker you can keep altering your lines.

Here is the tank after the section has been removed. This cost $15 in dremel metal cutting discs and took an hour
+ to do precisely.

Here is the cowl that was created.

Bend the side arms straight out to get the tail shape.

Now slice the cowl down the center and set it to the desired width for your bike/ass.

Put the side cover on to give the bike a "full" finished look. Man is it starting to look nasty.

Now I have to form a flat steel pan to weld to the top of the seat cowl, as well as internal supports and mounts. Lots, and lots of welding, bodywork, decals, paint, .....ugh. The fight continues. Next will be the engine build and the application of boxes and boxes of custom goodies I have been ordering over the last couple years. Check back for progress on the build, Thanks for viewing!

 

[teddpage]

Ummm...WOW! Amazing build so far! This is guna be one clean machine! Keep up the good work.

 

[Dom!!!]

Beautiful work. I will be watching this build Most definitely. Quick question, after using the SOS pads on the wheels , did you follow up with a polish ? Thanks Dom

 

[ARC Restorations]

I just used SOS pads so far. When I do final assembly I will hit them up with some good chrome polish for final finish.

 

[Flugtechnik]

Subscribed!

 

[Dom!!!]

I just used SOS pads so far. When I do final assembly I will hit them up with some good chrome polish for final finish.

The chrome looks great , and I'm almost to this point on my build so I was just Preparing myself and getting ideas. Thanks

 

[pawn]

cool build! Looks great so far, can't wait to see the final product.

 

[AS1_Andy]

Wow, that looks great. Looks like my 68 YR2 before I got it from you. Now I know where the tail section came from. Great work.

 

[mattfeet]

Any updates on the seat fabrication? Im looking at doing the same thing with a spare tank.

 

[ARC Restorations]

Silver Bullet CB450SS Progress Update:

Holy hell, what a winter and spring! Been incredibly busy with work and the kiddo so haven't had time for much progress. Got some good updates now though. Every part needed to complete the bike is now purchased. Let me know what you guys think of the build so far.

Got the rubber in finally.... Yummy! This is the 120/90 rear, 110/90 front set up.

Frame chopped and shortened. Mount holes drilled for new fasteners.

Skinned and lowered the seat, removed 1 1/2 inches of foam. Has a nice low look now but retains the OEM outfitting. This took a lot of work. Restored and modified the seat pan for DZUS fasteners for a quick and easy removal when swapping to the cafe seat. Also mounted a nice little flush mount tail light under the seat hump.

Rebuilt, Restored, and Customized Coils and Condenser set-up. This all came from Dime City Cycles. Takes two simple custom brackets to fit their universal coil kits nicely under the tank,

The final construction and welding of the cafe tail section. OMG where to start. Tons of custom metal smithing and welding. In the end the tail turned out just like I was hoping.

There is still a lot of body and paint work before the tail is finished but the hard part is over. I got so excited I threw a temporary coat of the cloud silver on the tail and drew the tail stripes in with a sharpie paint pen so you can see how the tail will look when completed. Here is a preview in the touring and cafe racer outfitting. It takes less than 30 seconds to switch from one seat to the other. Dzus 1/4 turn fasteners are awesome.

These bad boys are coming back from flat black ceramic coating this week!!

 

[Cookie]

And Project Night n' Day is born!
Wow, what a stunning piece of work. Well done so far!

 

[Islandstar]

Inspiring!!!!

 

[ApriliaBill]

Not trying to be a jerk, but what made the red one the most famous ever? I've always been a big fan of the 450's, and like where you're going with yours...

 

[jakeschmidt]

Amazing job so far dude.

 

[ARC Restorations]

Not trying to be a jerk, but what made the red one the most famous ever? I've always been a big fan of the 450's, and like where your going with yours...

It's just a page rank and personal experience thing. Type in "cb450 cafe racer" in Google. Back in 2006, while I was researching the 450 build and getting inspired the red and chrome 69 was really the top result in images and build quality (in my mind). There use to be a ton of information online about the build but it has now dwindled unfortunately. The shop that built it is still around and you can find more information if you look hard. It really is an amazing build, taken from an original chrome tanked 69 cb450 chopper.

 

[two-smoker]

Yessir, I like it.

 

[duds_dudson]

Hi there mate......this bike is looking pretty damn sweet! I'm working on a 1970 K3 resto myself......... i was going to ask you how you've gone with finding a new rear sprocket for yours??? It looks like they've stopped making the original part AND stopped making the part they replaced it with......so at the moment i'm looking at getting a CM400 sprocket in and machining out the centre by 4mm to fit........