doorpz
New Member
Hey I'm Jake, just stumbled across this site and thought I would sign up. I'm relatively new to bikes but I've been a car guy for a long time so wrenching is nothing new to me.
I recently had to get rid of my 82 honda cb750f in order to get a car but it was a fun bike while I had it.
This is how it looked when I got it.
And when I got rid of it.
I didn't do anything serious on it, just some maintenance and light mods. If I would have held onto it I probably would have swapped the front and rear ends to something more modern.
The first bike I actually owned was a 1971 Honda CL100. It's pretty much a scooter but it worked great for riding back and forth to school in the city.
This first post is going to be pretty long because I've already been working on it for awhile. Not sure if this would really be considered a cafe but it seemed the closest fit.
Here are some pics of when I first picked it up.
I rode it for around 8 months and it never let me down. It smoked like crazy and leaked oil but it always started and ran well enough. I was coming back from school one night and I was 2 blocks away from my house when a teenage girl pulled out from a side street right as I was getting to the intersection. She had a stop sign and I had the right of way but she didn't see me and pretty much ran me down. I got off pretty lucky and only messed up my shoulder a little bit. The bike however took more damage. The exhaust and shock on the right side got smashed up and the frame was bent too. The tank was dented and the headlight housing broke. The transmission locked up and wouldn't shift anymore. I had to hold the clutch in when I pushed it home.
Her insurance company totalled it out and paid me more than twice what I paid for it so I wasn't complaining too much. I originally was just going to store it at my brother's house and use parts off it for other stuff but then I enrolled in a custom metal fab class at the community college I go to and decided to salvage it and put it back onto the road.
I stripped the frame down at first to get a look at the damage. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be after I got everything off. The exhaust and shock took the brunt of the impact.
I heated the bent section of frame and used a hydraulic spreader to straighten it back up. It worked pretty well but it's still not perfectly straight. I might end up tweaking it one more time.
Next I decided I was going to upgrade the motor to a 200cc honda clone motor. I used one they had laying around school to test fit in the frame. The engine bolted right up and looks pretty good. I'll have to fab a new top mount but that should be easy.
I wanted to swap the 27mm front forks out for something a little bigger. I also wanted to put a front disk on it so I started going through those steering stem and front fork diameter lists that are around online and tried to find a combo that I could just bolt up on the frame. I found that the early 80's honda CM200T's had the same steering stem and used 31mm forks so I found a triple tree ebay for like $30. I couldn't find any bikes that had disk brakes with 31mm forks so I was just going to use a 250 nighthawk front end but when I was at a motorcycle salvage place I stumbled onto a suzuki GN125 parts bike that I liked. It had nice alloy wheels and a front disk brake. It had 32mm forks but I didn't care at that point and picked up the whole bike for $200.
I was driving my jetta and hadn't been planning on buying a motorcycle so I had to strip it down so it would fit in the trunk and back seat. The mechanics at the shop thought it was hilarious and they timed me as I pulled it apart.
After doing some more research I decided to have the 31mm Honda triple tree bored out to 32mm. My teacher knew a guy that does machine work and he did it for $50. I also decided to swap the whole suzuki swing arm instead of just the back wheel. I got lucky and the swing arm just fit after I trimmed down the stock swing arm mount. After I trimmed the mount down I welded in an insert that fit inside the stock mount and was the right size for the suzuki swing arm bolt.
With the front forks and wheels on.
And with the tank and seat on.
And next to a stock 71 CL100 that somebody else at school is working on.
The suzuki swing arm stretches it and is also a bit wider so I'm going to have to make some custom spacers for the rear axle and new shock mounts. The front end looks good so far too. The Honda triple tree is a little wider than the suzuki one was so I'll need to make some spacers for the front axle as well but better too wide than too narrow. I picked up the engine yesterday so I need to get that installed so I can start getting the rear end dialed in. I replaced the stock ball bearing steering stem bearings with some tapered roller bearings today so now I can get the forks installed and work out the spacing for the front axle as well. I ordered some clip ons handlebars off ebay but I just realized I ordered 31mm instead of 32mm so I'll have to return the 31's and find some 32's. I'll probably get some longer shocks for the rear to raise it up some. I'm going to run the clip ons above the top triple tree so it won't look as crazy as it does now with the forks sticking up above the top triple tree. There is still alot of work left to do but I'm hoping to be done sometime this summer.
Jake
I recently had to get rid of my 82 honda cb750f in order to get a car but it was a fun bike while I had it.
This is how it looked when I got it.
And when I got rid of it.
I didn't do anything serious on it, just some maintenance and light mods. If I would have held onto it I probably would have swapped the front and rear ends to something more modern.
The first bike I actually owned was a 1971 Honda CL100. It's pretty much a scooter but it worked great for riding back and forth to school in the city.
This first post is going to be pretty long because I've already been working on it for awhile. Not sure if this would really be considered a cafe but it seemed the closest fit.
Here are some pics of when I first picked it up.
I rode it for around 8 months and it never let me down. It smoked like crazy and leaked oil but it always started and ran well enough. I was coming back from school one night and I was 2 blocks away from my house when a teenage girl pulled out from a side street right as I was getting to the intersection. She had a stop sign and I had the right of way but she didn't see me and pretty much ran me down. I got off pretty lucky and only messed up my shoulder a little bit. The bike however took more damage. The exhaust and shock on the right side got smashed up and the frame was bent too. The tank was dented and the headlight housing broke. The transmission locked up and wouldn't shift anymore. I had to hold the clutch in when I pushed it home.
Her insurance company totalled it out and paid me more than twice what I paid for it so I wasn't complaining too much. I originally was just going to store it at my brother's house and use parts off it for other stuff but then I enrolled in a custom metal fab class at the community college I go to and decided to salvage it and put it back onto the road.
I stripped the frame down at first to get a look at the damage. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be after I got everything off. The exhaust and shock took the brunt of the impact.
I heated the bent section of frame and used a hydraulic spreader to straighten it back up. It worked pretty well but it's still not perfectly straight. I might end up tweaking it one more time.
Next I decided I was going to upgrade the motor to a 200cc honda clone motor. I used one they had laying around school to test fit in the frame. The engine bolted right up and looks pretty good. I'll have to fab a new top mount but that should be easy.
I wanted to swap the 27mm front forks out for something a little bigger. I also wanted to put a front disk on it so I started going through those steering stem and front fork diameter lists that are around online and tried to find a combo that I could just bolt up on the frame. I found that the early 80's honda CM200T's had the same steering stem and used 31mm forks so I found a triple tree ebay for like $30. I couldn't find any bikes that had disk brakes with 31mm forks so I was just going to use a 250 nighthawk front end but when I was at a motorcycle salvage place I stumbled onto a suzuki GN125 parts bike that I liked. It had nice alloy wheels and a front disk brake. It had 32mm forks but I didn't care at that point and picked up the whole bike for $200.
I was driving my jetta and hadn't been planning on buying a motorcycle so I had to strip it down so it would fit in the trunk and back seat. The mechanics at the shop thought it was hilarious and they timed me as I pulled it apart.
After doing some more research I decided to have the 31mm Honda triple tree bored out to 32mm. My teacher knew a guy that does machine work and he did it for $50. I also decided to swap the whole suzuki swing arm instead of just the back wheel. I got lucky and the swing arm just fit after I trimmed down the stock swing arm mount. After I trimmed the mount down I welded in an insert that fit inside the stock mount and was the right size for the suzuki swing arm bolt.
With the front forks and wheels on.
And with the tank and seat on.
And next to a stock 71 CL100 that somebody else at school is working on.
The suzuki swing arm stretches it and is also a bit wider so I'm going to have to make some custom spacers for the rear axle and new shock mounts. The front end looks good so far too. The Honda triple tree is a little wider than the suzuki one was so I'll need to make some spacers for the front axle as well but better too wide than too narrow. I picked up the engine yesterday so I need to get that installed so I can start getting the rear end dialed in. I replaced the stock ball bearing steering stem bearings with some tapered roller bearings today so now I can get the forks installed and work out the spacing for the front axle as well. I ordered some clip ons handlebars off ebay but I just realized I ordered 31mm instead of 32mm so I'll have to return the 31's and find some 32's. I'll probably get some longer shocks for the rear to raise it up some. I'm going to run the clip ons above the top triple tree so it won't look as crazy as it does now with the forks sticking up above the top triple tree. There is still alot of work left to do but I'm hoping to be done sometime this summer.
Jake
