2-Part '74 CB200 Build, Slow and Steady

[bojica]

Hello. I'm fairly new to DTT and have been snooping around grabbing ideas from different threads around here on a 1974 Honda CB200 that I snagged last month.

I've finally decided to start my own build thread to document my work and hopefully get some pointers and advice from all you knowledgeable people. This seems to be a great and down to earth community, especially compared to some of the jokers you encounter on what's becoming more of a "hipster" forum, VWVortex.

My resources and mechanic knowledge are somewhat limited, as a majority of my work will be done in a single car garage at my apartment complex with basic tools, and this being my first bike. I am more of just a weekend mechanic having done a few things here and there to the modern cars that my wife and I own.

I'll warn those of you reading right now, there are only 2 things I can guarantee:
1) This build will be somewhat slow compared to a lot of the threads you see here. The summers in FL are humid and uncomfortable, so it takes a lot of will power for me to work during the afternoons. I try to squeeze in a few smaller projects during the week after my normal 9-5, but most of the action will happen on the weekends.
2) I will try and use as many "bolt on" upgrades as possible. I am not a craftsman by any means, and I will do my best not to pretend to be. I realize that some things will need to be fabricated, and if it is necessary I will take on the challenge. I don't own any specialized tools and such, so mostly hand and power tools will be used.

This will be a 2 stage restoration:
Stage 1 - get her running and tuned well as a stock bike for commuting.
Stage 2 - strip her down to the frame, clean, polish, and restore cafe style. My focus here will be engine & efficiency first, aesthetics second.

Now that introductions and expectations are over, let's get to the bike. Her name is Layla, and once up and running (and running well), my hopes are to make her my daily driver.

7/21/12 - Shots after I trailered her home

Bike = $900

Summary of observations when I picked her up:

• She runs and sounds great, but would stall once you let off the throttle and/or open the chokes. In hind sight, the lack of fuel in the tank may have also been a culprit ;D.
• Lots of surface rust on some parts of the frame, but no pitting.
• Minor surface rust on the exhaust and some of the chrome parts.
• Only rust in the tank is some at on the filler neck
• Tank paint is in good condition for being original
• Control cables are in OK shape, and seem to all be functioning
• Mostly stock, minus the air boxes and rear fender/tail light assembly
• There are a lot of spider webs

Lots of work ahead! Needless to say, I'm thrilled to start building this new bike. It's been almost a month since I picked her up, and I've done a little bit of work so far. I'm going to be working on catching up on the posts, so stay tuned.

Thanks for reading!

 

[bojica]

7/29/12 - First attempt at stripping her down

Here are some inspection shots of the bike during tear down:

Removed the following:

• Seat
• Tank
• Fuel lines
• Unifilters
• Front fender
• Chain guard
• Side kickstand

I may have forgotten to list something, but everything came to a halt when the 4th spider was found hanging out with its eggs under the chain guard. At this point, I had already found some under the tank and frame and eliminated those, this one was a little more serious being a black widow.

Before I did any more work, that problem had to be exterminated.

7/31/12 - Exterminate

Bought a fumigator and perimeter defense from Home Depot.

Used 2 of the RAID fumigator foggers over the next couple of days. Only 1 was necessary, but I thought I'd throw another one for good measure.

Fumigators = $14.20
Perimeter defense = $10.00

After that I found 2 other dead spiders hanging under the frame on between a couple spokes on the rear wheel. Those were the last I've seen so far.

The story will continue tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

 

[crqcycles]

Nice bike, pretty good machine to start working! It just need lots of love and lots of time! What mods are you planning to do?

 

[bojica]

Thanks for the support!

Haven't brainstormed all of my mods yet because I've been focusing on just getting her running stock so I have a baseline to mod from. Here's what I have so far:

• Sandblast and powder coat frame (still thinking of colors)
• Weight reduction, including stripping down to kick start only
• Pods
• Cafe seat
• Drag bars
• Redo wiring and relocate electronics/batt under seat
• Cut and paint front fender
• Smaller, tighter turn signals
• Replace control cables
• Replace headlight
• CB175 drum frontend conversion

For now, I've opted not to look into rear sets for two reasons:
1) I'm short - 5' 8"
2) $$$ - I would need a shop to weld them on for me

I think i'm going to stick w/ drag bars as opposed to clubmans or clip ons due to cost and since I'm not going for rear sets, it should be more comfortable to ride.

I'm still at a loss when it comes to a cafe seat. I'm not too interested in building my own (though tailoring a seat to exactly how you want it would be nice), so I'm looking for bolt ons that I can slap directly onto the bike with little to no modification. Anyone have any ideas? I've been looking at these:

Composite Roadster from Roc City Cafe Racers http://bit.ly/N6rWPE:

eBay Cafe Seat from Vietnam http://bit.ly/PkiTcz:

I prefer the Composite Roadster from Roc City because it's more of the style that I'm looking for, but the eBay seat is a direct bolt onto the bike, which is what I'm looking for as well.

If anyone has any insight or suggestions, I'd appreciate it!

 

[crqcycles]

Hey! That's a pretty ambitious project! You should end up with an awesome bike!
Since your bike is on the smaller side, I would suggest you to try motocross bars turned upside down! They look pretty much like clubmans but don't have the bigger shape for bigger bikes that looks out of place. That's what I am rocking on my bike!
As for the seat, why don't you try to make your own using the OEM seat pan?
Cheers...

 

[bojica]

I'll have to take a look into the motocross bars. I saw a shot of them on your thread and they look nice.

I'll have to look at a few youtube videos on how to make my own seat out of my original seat pan. as long as its not too difficult I might have to go that route.

thanks for the suggestions

 

[808shadow]

Hey man you can make your seat out of fiberglass yourself and save alot of money. Look it up on YouTube , its fairly easy to do. Ill be doing it as soon as I get to that stage!

 

[bojica]

Thanks for the tip! I'll definitely look into it if it's going to save me some bills. Time to muster up some craftsmanship!

 

[bojica]

8/3/12 - DMV

Took care of tax, tag, title and registration today! The PO only had it registered in Vermont, w/ no title. I was able to get a title w/ just the registration, bill of sale, and notarized odometer verification here in FL. The hard copy of the title came in a couple weeks later.

Sorry about the bad editing - don't have photoshop or anything that can blur on this PC.

8/12/12 - More Disassembly

Removed and disassembled both carbs and petcock to soak in carb cleaner overnight.

Removed drive chain and inspected front and rear sprockets.

Lubed and was going to replace the chain w/ this.

It's a 520x102 drive chain which I thought was correct, but I put it on today and there was a lot of slack.

Anyone know the specs of the stock 200 drive chain?

 

[deepwaterimports]

I'm keen to follow mate any more updates