My 1978 Honda CB750 K8 cafe project
- Thread starter cxtex
- Start date
clutchslip
New Member
Looking good ,that seat really goes well with the tank and the style off the bike.love the alloy rims as well
cxtex
New Member
cbjohnny said:
In the last pic I posted, I was still in the process of putting the whole bike back together. Not quite done yet, and I still have to get the fender painted; then I can put the brace back on. I also need to adjust the forks some to make sure I eliminate any potential stiction.
I do think the brace helps, and it will be on there when I finally get the bike out this year.
Did you already swap the front end on your 77?
No. I read back through your build and realized that you had put the GL front end on. I'm hoping there's something similar available for my stock front end. I only removed the front fender because I wanted to run a really wide tire. It may have been a dumb move based purely on the fact that I thought it would look mean. May revert back to a stock tire width so I can run the fender, which I have since learned is a fairly structural part of a stock 750s fork design.
CB750 Cafe Racer Fan
New Member
Nice build!
The seat looks like a Carpy Vincent. Can you provide more detail and/or pictures on how you fabricated the seat pad?
The seat looks like a Carpy Vincent. Can you provide more detail and/or pictures on how you fabricated the seat pad?
cxtex
New Member
CB750 Cafe Racer Fan said:
gribbs said:
I made the seat pad from a $15 emergency mat (pic below) I purchased at Murray's (discount auto parts chain). I rough cut the pieces with an electric carving knife, glued everything together with contact cement, then did the final shaping/smoothing with a drum sander on a die grinder. The pad is held onto the tail section with velcro. To contour the front of the pad (pic below), I slit the pad and inserted a bent piece of 1/8" square steel stock, then used contact cement to reseal the slit. The piece of foam under the contour is to prevent the steel stock from flattening out after repeated mounts/dismounts -that's the theory anyway.
Looking rad! So what year of GL did you use for the front end? Is that brace an ad-on and where can I find one? What all is involved with the conversion? I just got my bike last week and had a gas on it in SoCal! But the front end did seem a little squirrely in the corners at speed.
cxtex
New Member
The front end is made up of 76 GL1000 parts. Just about everything up there is GL except for one of the steering bearings (upper or lower -I forgot, but I did have to use one of the original bearing to get the tree into the CB frame.) The fork brace is by Markland which is aftermarket for those early Goldwings. Bought mine on ebay.
For dual disc with spoke wheel conversion, the front end from 75-77 GL1000 will work. I couldn't find a complete front end, so I bought mine piece by piece -forks, triple tree, wheel, discs, calipers, fender, and all the necessary bolts. As a consequence to purchasing items piece by piece, I ended up with two extra sets of front rotors, and extra set of calipers, and a set of GL gauges. Then, I wanted to match the back wheel with the front wheel, so I bought a GL rear wheel, and relaced the rim to the CB hub.
Althought finding all this stuff was fun and fairly cheap (not much peeps bidding against you for old GL parts), it's probably easier and cheaper to just change the fork oil, get progressive springs, and a fork brace for the original CB front end.
For dual disc with spoke wheel conversion, the front end from 75-77 GL1000 will work. I couldn't find a complete front end, so I bought mine piece by piece -forks, triple tree, wheel, discs, calipers, fender, and all the necessary bolts. As a consequence to purchasing items piece by piece, I ended up with two extra sets of front rotors, and extra set of calipers, and a set of GL gauges. Then, I wanted to match the back wheel with the front wheel, so I bought a GL rear wheel, and relaced the rim to the CB hub.
Althought finding all this stuff was fun and fairly cheap (not much peeps bidding against you for old GL parts), it's probably easier and cheaper to just change the fork oil, get progressive springs, and a fork brace for the original CB front end.
cxtex
New Member
Hinz said:
To jog my memory, I looked into this again by searching some forums. It turns out the bearing in question is the lower bearing, but more specifically, the lower race. You will need to retain the lower race from the 750, then the lower GL bearing will fit right into that. Here's a thread with some info and links to even more threads regarding the conversion.
http://forums.sohc4.net/index.php?topic=48488.0
xjrockeater
New Member
cxtex said:
How did you convert the 40 yr old Honda fitting that went to the motor to accept the AN style fitting and hose. Once you cut the fitting out of the old hose and crimped clamp did you leave it intact or did you have to buy the Weld in bung and go that rout? I am in the process know of trying to source the parts to do my own lines as well, and I absolutely HATE hose clamps so I would really like to do the AN style lines with stainless hose. Unfortunetly though, I have not been able to find any write ups on the forums of how to do this. I do know that for the hose it is either -9 or -10 for the size.
cxtex
New Member
Actually, those aren't real AN fittings. Those are the fake AN fittings with regular hose clamps covered by the fake AN covers.
At the time I was putting the bike together, I was going to use the Cycle Exchange AN conversion kit (AN female that bolts into the stock location of engine block), but the new line I would have had to use would have been smaller than stock. Also, I was using the factory oil can, and the bungs welded on that thing are not the typical AN sizes...even worse, they are two different sizes (probably to make sure you don't mix up the inlet with the outlet). The size difference is hardly noticeable, maybe even the same diameter bungs, but different pitched threads.
At the time I was putting the bike together, I was going to use the Cycle Exchange AN conversion kit (AN female that bolts into the stock location of engine block), but the new line I would have had to use would have been smaller than stock. Also, I was using the factory oil can, and the bungs welded on that thing are not the typical AN sizes...even worse, they are two different sizes (probably to make sure you don't mix up the inlet with the outlet). The size difference is hardly noticeable, maybe even the same diameter bungs, but different pitched threads.
