1971 cl100

[benroloff]

Sounds like something I would do, and on more than one occasion.

I don't mean to laugh at you......just with you.

That's funny right there, I don't care who you are.......

I think paper towels are bio-degradable, so you should be ok, I think

haha no offense taken. After the initial moment of self hatred I laughed pretty hard. I believe that when I told my brother what I had done his exact words were, “you nimrod” followed by extensive laughter. Definitely not one of my finest moments when it comes to mechanical repairs, but hey, what’s life without some entertainment right?

 

[benroloff]

Also I'm really interested to see what you do here... I really like the small displacement metric bikes.. they are 2 tons of fun in a 10lb bag

Haha... that's like your bike building initiation dude... I've done some real bonehead stuff that cost me a lot of time and effort... glad you caught it tho, now you have SUPER clean carbs xD

Thankfully it was only a few minutes of lost time. I can’t tell you how many times I have forgotten little things on the bike or on my 84 Honda TRX200 atv that have cost me so much time. For example, I have put the carb all the way back in the bike about 5 times now and forgotten to put the slide back in. Really appreciate the interest in the bike. I’m having so much fun with it. So far I’ve only had it around the block a few times but man it is a blast. And it’s so un-intimidating and approachable. I can pick up either end of the bike with ease to move it around the garage and I never worry about not being able to pick it up if I drop it. Who would’ve thought that 11 hp(probably like 8 now after 50 years) could be so much fun!

 

[Luugo86]

Good stuff man.. My daily town-hopper atm is a 1982 Suzuki GN125 and the more I ride it the more I love it... so much fun to bomb around the back country roads.

 

[benroloff]

Good stuff man.. My daily town-hopper atm is a 1982 Suzuki GN125 and the more I ride it the more I love it... so much fun to bomb around the back country roads.

That bike looks like a heap of fun man. Personally I’m a little biased towards Honda’s for no particular reason other than that’s all I’ve had experience with in power sports and I just think they’re cool. I am a big proponent of small displacement light weight bikes. All bikes have their place but I think you can have a ton of fun riding a slow bike at its fastest all the while going a tenth the speed of a liter bike

 

[Luugo86]

That bike looks like a heap of fun man. Personally I’m a little biased towards Honda’s for no particular reason other than that’s all I’ve had experience with in power sports and I just think they’re cool. I am a big proponent of small displacement light weight bikes. All bikes have their place but I think you can have a ton of fun riding a slow bike at its fastest all the while going a tenth the speed of a liter bike

I agree 100% man... It is a lot of fun. This is the first bike I've had that I can honestly say I've pushed the machine to it's limits... it's fun bombin that little bike through the Amish back-country at 65 lol

 

[benroloff]

I agree 100% man... It is a lot of fun. This is the first bike I've had that I can honestly say I've pushed the machine to it's limits... it's fun bombin that little bike through the Amish back-country at 65 lol

That is one beautiful bike my friend. I’m just impressed that you can get it going 65 lol

 

[benroloff]

Small update. Just been trying to clean things up and get the bike to presentable condition. Not looking for show quality, she’s a survivor after all, just something I can hop on and not worry about. I spent a few hours the other night re-wrapping some sections of the wiring harness and tucking it up near the frame out of sight. Polished up the wheels and fenders and ordered some the rubber mounts for the tank that were missing from the bike. Then today I pulled the headlight case off the bike to repair a bunch of cracks in it and try to clean off the tape residue from decades ago that was there to hold everything together. So I plastic welded it back together. Next I tried to clean the residue off and couldn’t find anything that would do it so I decided that since that part of plastic was so faded and messed up anyways I would just sand off the residue and paint a 1” ring around the case in white to accent the tank.

so I sanded it clean and then after some shitty masking and paint prep I sprayed few coats of primer and a few of the closest white I could find in the basement and ended up with this as the end result

You can actually see in the picture that my mask lines weren’t too great and and I didn’t actually fix the cracks on the outside just from the inside, also the white I picked was definitely a little off from the white on the tank, but all in all not to bad, and the tape residue is gone so I’m pretty pleased. And finally a pic of it on the bike-

Not sure if I actually like the look of it or not, but it’s better than it looked before. Plus if I decide that I really hate the look I’ll find some color matched paint and do it right and bondo it and use clear coat, but at this point the chances are that the bikes gonna run through branches and brush and be in the woods so I don’t see any point in dumping a ton of time into paint work.
Oh and I also ordered a led 6v headlight bulb and socket because my low beam is burned out and I just don’t like the original sealed beam halogen with all the current draw and how much it costs to replace a sealed beam, but I hate the look of white led light on a vintage bike so I ordered a halogen imitation led and i think I’m gonna hole saw the old bulb out and glue the new socket and bulb in so that it’s somewhat replace-able. And this bulb’s high beam is supposed to be 1amp at 6.8v with 650 lumen output. So if I can make this all work I’ll be super happy, and it only costs like $6 for a new LED bulb so in theory I’ll have a brighter, more reliable, lower current headlight that is cheap to replace, so expect updates on that in the next few weeks.
Lol remember when I said this would be a small update? Whoops...

 

[pidjones]

If the headlight case cracks again, repair the cracks with ABS plumbing cement and fiberglass cloth.

 

[iatethepeach]

Nice work! The bike is looking better, for sure.

Maybe someone who actually knows something about painting will chime in, but my guess is a quality vinyl tape would conform to the spherical shape of the headlamp bucket better than masking tape, and leave you with a sharper edge. Check out the rattle-can bling thread, I bet they've discussed it there.

I'm curious to know how your headlight bulb works out. I hate the look of LED, too, and switched my bikes' lights back to incandescents. Except for the speedo gauge lights- those are a hundred times better with LED.

 

[Luugo86]

I like the headlight bucket man.. thrifty and nice fix if you ask me. The bike is shaping up pretty nicely man. If you ever need parts https://www.davidsilverspares.com/ That is the main supplier I use for my old Hondas. How is the exhaust on your bike? Is it solid or rusted out ?

 

[benroloff]

If the headlight case cracks again, repair the cracks with ABS plumbing cement and fiberglass cloth.

I’ve done some fiberglass work before, which was my plan for a permanent fix later on, but never tried plumbing cement. What’s the benefit there?

 

[benroloff]

Nice work! The bike is looking better, for sure.

Maybe someone who actually knows something about painting will chime in, but my guess is a quality vinyl tape would conform to the spherical shape of the headlamp bucket better than masking tape, and leave you with a sharper edge. Check out the rattle-can bling thread, I bet they've discussed it there.

I'm curious to know how your headlight bulb works out. I hate the look of LED, too, and switched my bikes' lights back to incandescents. Except for the speedo gauge lights- those are a hundred times better with LED.

I have a roll of vinyl masking tape but couldn’t find it last night so I just made this work. I also pulled the masking off before the paint was very hard so the edge was kind of rubbery, so I’m sure if I had waited longer I might’ve gotten better results. I would love to do some custom paint at some point but I have come to love the paint on this bikes tank. I also have access to professional level equipment so idk if I’d do rattle can or not.
I’m super excited about the led conversion. It just makes sense to me. Where’d you get the led’s for the speedo?

 

[benroloff]

I like the headlight bucket man.. thrifty and nice fix if you ask me. The bike is shaping up pretty nicely man. If you ever need parts https://www.davidsilverspares.com/ That is the main supplier I use for my old Hondas. How is the exhaust on your bike? Is it solid or rusted out ?

Thanks! It was never supposed to be a pro level fix, and it cost me $0 and about 2 hours of my time so all things considered, not too bad. I had not heard of that source of parts. Looks like a good place to go. Some stuff is definitely on the expensive end, but other stuff is dirt cheap. I mean $10 for an aftermarket replacement piston? That’s pretty great if you ask me.
My exhaust is completely rusted through in one spot. I did a temp repair with the permatex exhaust patch, but long term I was planning on just cutting that section out and putting in a new chunk. The place the bike is gonna be stored long term is at my uncles place outside of town and he’s got a full shop and welding equipment that I can use whenever I need so unless I stumble across a new pipe that’s the plan. There is a bike boneyard like 5 minutes from my house that I want to check out. From the road it looks like thousands of vintage bike in pieces and I have a connection that works at the speed shop out front so I can get in to walk the yard if I want to so maybe I’ll find one there.

 

[Luugo86]

Thanks! It was never supposed to be a pro level fix, and it cost me $0 and about 2 hours of my time so all things considered, not too bad. I had not heard of that source of parts. Looks like a good place to go. Some stuff is definitely on the expensive end, but other stuff is dirt cheap. I mean $10 for an aftermarket replacement piston? That’s pretty great if you ask me.
My exhaust is completely rusted through in one spot. I did a temp repair with the permatex exhaust patch, but long term I was planning on just cutting that section out and putting in a new chunk. The place the bike is gonna be stored long term is at my uncles place outside of town and he’s got a full shop and welding equipment that I can use whenever I need so unless I stumble across a new pipe that’s the plan. There is a bike boneyard like 5 minutes from my house that I want to check out. From the road it looks like thousands of vintage bike in pieces and I have a connection that works at the speed shop out front so I can get in to walk the yard if I want to so maybe I’ll find one there.

Very nice man! Where are you located.. I would love to walk through that boneyard for some bits and pieces

 

[Luugo86]

And as far as my little GN125... It hums all day at 60-65 on the amish back-country roads man... You cant baby these little metric singles.. They make all their power up high in the RPM range so you gotta ride it like you stole it haha

 

[iatethepeach]

I got my gauge lights from Superbright, but it looks like Sparck has them now- I might try them first. You want white 6v BA9s. You can't tell they're LED, so they don't clash with the character of the vintage bike at all. They're just 10x brighter.

I can't remember if you need to adapt the wiring for an LED turn signal indicator in the speedo, but I don't think so. You do have to modify it if you want to use LED turn signal bulbs.

 

[benroloff]

Very nice man! Where are you located.. I would love to walk through that boneyard for some bits and pieces

I am located in Madison, Wisconsin. The place is called Suter’s Speed Shop. They sell bikes and parts and stuff but we rent a storage unit next door and you can see the boneyard from there, so that’s how I found out about it. I’m not sure if anyone can walk through the place or not, but it couldn’t hurt to give them a call and find out. The owner is a huge bike guy. I believe he held the world record in the 1/8th mile ice drags for a long time many years ago.

And as far as my little GN125... It hums all day at 60-65 on the amish back-country roads man... You cant baby these little metric singles.. They make all their power up high in the RPM range so you gotta ride it like you stole it haha

That’s wild! I’m almost afraid to rev mine out because the muffler is not doing much muffling anymore and I don’t want my neighbors to hate me lol. When I get it out in the country side I’ll let her rip though

 

[benroloff]

I got my gauge lights from Superbright, but it looks like Sparck has them now- I might try them first. You want white 6v BA9s. You can't tell they're LED, so they don't clash with the character of the vintage bike at all. They're just 10x brighter.

I can't remember if you need to adapt the wiring for an LED turn signal indicator in the speedo, but I don't think so. You do have to modify it if you want to use LED turn signal bulbs.

Cool I’ll take a look into those. I really don’t care about the turn signal light as I don’t have them, and the neutral light is disconnected because the switch was shorting to the frame and causing problems when I was trying to time the bike, but they’d definitely be nice to have down the road. Funny story I’ve been trying to figure out what the third light labeled “w“ was on my speedo and I finally realized that Honda called the turn signals “winkers” so it’s actually the turn signal light, and since I don’t have blinkers I’d never had the light come on and man I could not figure that one out

 

[Maritime]

I’ve done some fiberglass work before, which was my plan for a permanent fix later on, but never tried plumbing cement. What’s the benefit there?

ABS cement melts the ABS and it re-hardens after with the mesh bound to it. The regular epoxy doesn't stick the same.

 

[benroloff]

So not a whole lot to update on this bike. I put the rubber gas tank mounts on and a new air filter, but other than that it’s about the same, though I did pull the swing arm and paint that one day. It didn’t really need it but it was a little beat up looking and I was pretty bored.

And here’s the bike as it sits now. As you can see by the cardboard under it it has a small oil drip. Not sure yet where it’s from, but also not going to worry too much about it so long as I keep an eye on it.
I also trailered the bike out to its home for the foreseeable future at my uncles. As much as I want to get a street tag for it it just doesn’t make sense to do it at this point in my life. So instead, trails it is. I played around for a while on the trails at his place, and the bike did pretty well. I did find however that it still has some strange idling characteristics. Sometimes it’ll idle slow, sometimes high, sometimes it runs away a little bit. I thought I solved this with the new gaskets and whatnot but it would seem not. I plan on using the brake clean vacuum leak test to see if it’s a leak in the intake system still, or an unrelated problem. Also found out that as I expected, it needs to be geared down, but I’m having some trouble finding info on sprockets, so if anyone knows where I might find the right sprocket with one or two less teeth(front obviously) please let me know. And finally I found that I need a skid plate. I suspected this as well due to the low ground clearance. I also wouldn’t mind stiffer rear springs, but I don’t have the cash to throw at a set of all new shocks. But all in all it handled the trails well. It was able to keep pace with my brother on our 1984 TRX200, pictured here:

This atv might i add is stupidly capable off road, despite being 36 years old and two wheel drive. Hopefully I can get some stuff done on the bike this winter, however I leave for my junior hockey season soon so time that I am both home and able to get in the shop is going to be pretty limited. But my goal is to get all the things outlined in this post done this winter and then this spring my brother and I will load the atv and the cl on the trailer and go camp and ride for a weekend. So yea, that’s about it for now