72 CB750: Dolores... 5 years later, I'm back to work!

[hillsy]

Re: Alex's 72 CB750... My Bike Has Wheels Again!!!

If that brace is going to hit the seal area on fork compression, putting a hose clamp in there is going to make things much worse.

You either need to beef up the springs to limit the fork travel or remove the brace from the fork travel area.

 

[JRK5892]

Re: Alex's 72 CB750... My Bike Has Wheels Again!!!

just add 15 w fork oil... it will solve your problem. if you find that is too stiff do a blend of 10 and 15 w/ I run that in all my bikes, stiff enough to ride very agressive yet soft enought to ride all day. on my cafe i ran 15 w.

 

[Deviant1]

Re: Alex's 72 CB750... My Bike Has Wheels Again!!!

The brace clears the tire when the front end is completely compressed, what I was talking about is bracing the fork lowers together with the stock fender brace so that they will travel together. The problem is that then I have a lot of stuff cluttering up the front end. I like the way it looks now, so unless it's a problem down the road, I'm planning on running it the way it sits. Workin on the bike with Twisted_Wheelz tonight, so expect a large update with pics tonight or tomorrow. The controlls on the bars will be the main focus tonight. The question here is: To run the wiring internally or externally and shrink wrap it? I'm leaning toward running it externally to keep from having to uninstall then drill, then reinstall the handlebars...

 

[hillsy]

Re: Alex's 72 CB750... My Bike Has Wheels Again!!!

Not much point running internal wiring with those clip-ons. You'd get about 2" inside the bars then you'd have to exit them again

I used heatshrink on the control wiring on my fighter - it's OK, but it makes the wiring "stiffer" and because it hugs the wires you get to see every bend, crease, fold, solder, whatever on the wires (not a big problem, but depends on how fussy you are ;D).
On the plus side, you can bend the heatshrink to follow your bars and zip tie them in place which looks a bit neater than the more flexible OEM sheathing.

Back to the fork brace, I wasn't thinking about it clearing the front tyre (good to know it does ), but more than likely it will bang onto the fork bottoms under heavy braking and damage the seals or the gaitors (or both). You're effectively reducing your fork travel from 6 - 7" down to about 3".

 

[Deviant1]

Re: Alex's 72 CB750... My Bike Has Wheels Again!!!

It's been a while and a lot has gotten done on the bike. We got the handlebars wired up using a hole in the bottom of the controll housing. We used the original shrink wrap as it looks fine and is free. The whole cockpit area is basically done. I've still got the nest to figure out in the headlight bucket. Here's a pic:

We got the fiberglass seat pan done. We laid peices of wood into the glass for the seat cover to staple to from underneath. The seat pan was made from two layers of cloth with cloth reinforcements, then mat laid over that. We probably over did it on the pan, it's very sturdy now.

We also attatched a piece of wood to the back of the pan for extra support and to attatch the upholstry to.

After lots of bondo the tail is starting to come together. I'll be running more bondo over it till it's perfect, but here are some shots of it a sanded down a few layers back:

The notches are to clear the shocks.

Twisted Wheelz took my fuel tank and badges over to Billie's to get blasted. I'm going to leave the raw metal on the outside of the badges and paint the insides of the letters black. Here are the badges:

I didn't think to get shots of the tank after blasting, but we discovered some bondo work under three layers of paint. The bike was black, then gold, then red. The bondo was well done so we left it alone. Then we primered the tank and began to block it.

We added more bondo, sanded, prepped, then primered again.

Next we sanded, and wet sanded. Then we layed the mystery color on the tank, and it is nice. I'll probably post some pics of the tank after we get it done and perfect, but till then I'm not telling. Anyway, more bondo on the tail, then prep and paint, and a bit more painting on the tank are up next. A few other things as well.
As far as the fork brace thing goes, it all clears and the lowers should never come close to contact with it. I think the front end is going to stay the way it is unless there are problems.

 

[Deviant1]

Re: Alex's 72 CB750... Body Work is Fun...

I've been tinkering around trying to finish out odds and ends the last couple of days. T-minus 13 days until final deadline. There's a lot to get done in those 13 days...
I taped and painted the tank badges. I cut out the very inside of the letters and pulled them out.

Then I painted the insides satin black. Tank badges done!

I've also been working on getting the seat all bondoed and sanded. I got the sharp corners I was after, but I've still got one more coat of bondo to fill some low spots.

We also did a small bit of fiberglass to repair a small crack in the sidecover. Then we filled and sanded the crack from the front.

Did you notice a tank up there^? Yeah, I threw it on there to get a look at it. So here's a mockup shot with the new color: Rustoleum Burnt Orange.

We've still got to sand and paint the tank again, this is a learning process after all, but the color is excellent. The tail will get it next! Twisted_Wheelz took the seat pan to cut the foam and see about covering it. That dude is great, and I hope I can help him out on his build as much as he's helped me. So we're coming together, basically just wiring and other reassembly after the tins are done. Oh and a front brake... I always put that off. And one bar-end mirror. I think that's all.... I think.
So here's a question: Should I paint the sidecovers gloss black? Or the burnt orange? And should I put badges on them or leave them smooth? I've got an old pair of white hm wings that would look good, but I don't know. Let me know what ya think...

 

[troybilt]

Re: Alex's 72 CB750... Body Work is Fun...

Bike looks fantastic! Love it. The sharp edges on the seat are a real nice touch. Hopefully they'll stay. Badges are some of the best re-do/save I've seen. Really nice work! That color rocks!

 

[Deviant1]

Re: Alex's 72 CB750... Mommy's Little Monster...

Thanks troy! I hope the edges hold too, but if not, I'll just sand them down to rounded and repaint. A few minutes ago I got bored and decided to work on the badge that I'm putting on the front of the tweak bar/tube brace. First I layed the burnt orange over the sand blasted badge, then I taped over it and cut out the insides of the letters, this time leaving the letters themselves intact and on the badge.

Then I sprayed some satin black over it and pulled the tape. I've still got some touch up to do with the burnt orange and a fine brush, but it looks pretty cool and it'll bring a touch of orange onto the front end. Here it is drying with the other two:

Still looking for opinions on the sidecovers issue.. Orange or black? With badges or without?

 

[diesel450]

Re: Alex's 72 CB750... Mommy's Little Monster...

I would definitely keep the side panels black. It looks a little more old school and tough that way I think. I would probably keep them blank or if you I did put something on them I'd do something to personalize the bike some kind of logo or something. Bike is looking great all around!! I wish I had a buddy here helping like that, sure keeps the momentum going.

 

[Curbcast]

Re: Alex's 72 CB750... Mommy's Little Monster...

Yeah that seat is very cool. The juice box seats Im not into. But this one looks good. I geuss they just look good on bigger bikes?

 

[Deviant1]

Re: Alex's 72 CB750... Mommy's Little Monster...

Diesel: Yeah dude, without Brandon here helping, pushing, working, etc. this bike might never have gotten done. I can't wait to help build his!
Curb: I don't know about the box/Dunstall style of seat myself, but when I saw that outboard cowl in a pile of debris I knew it would work. It's kind of boxy while still following the lines of the bike.
With only 11 days until my self imposed deadline, the pressure is on. We made a list of stuff that needs to be done and it's like 26 items long! Anyway we knocked a bunch of items off last night. tWistedWheelz brought the seat over yesterday padded, covered and all! He also sent me some progress pics to post here.
Here's the padding during cutdown:

Here's the padding finished with batting over it:

And here she is with the pleather pulled on and stapled. We got the pleather for 5 bucks. The padding itself came from an old jet ski seat I had tucked away for just such a purpose.

Big thanks go out not only to Brandon who went above and beyond yet again, but also to his future mother-in-law who has experience with such things and was there to help.
So the first thing we did was to throw everything on the bike to get a look! Here's the look.

As you can see, I decided on the black sidecovers with no badges.
here's another pic of the seat on the tail

The seat has gone from looking Dunstallish to looking more like a duc 900ss seat. Especially once the orange goes on it.
We devised a way to mount the seat to the frame. We drilled three holes in the seat pan and put machine screws through them with a nut tightened down on them. The screws correspond to three holes on the frame (one that we drilled, two that already existed). To secure the seat you tighten down nuts with washers on them. This gets the seat low and secures it very nicely. To go back to the stock seat, I just take off the nuts and put the factory seat back on the factory hinges. It'll work out nicely for those two-up rides with the old lady. Here's the bottom of the pan.

That big chunk of aluminum riveted to the bottom is to keep the seat from flexing.
We cut the hole out of the back for the taillight. It'll be mounted from the inside.

We also cut some notches into the frame in order to mount the blinkers.
This is tWistedWheelz doing what he loves best; Cutting the shit out of 40 year old steel.

Here's one of the notches:

And here's how we mounted the blinkers:

That's all for the pictures, but we also installed the rear brake linkage and controlls, put on a new coil and remounted the coil pack, and did lots of other small things. A little more body work, paint, and hooking all of the wires back up are next. If she runs, we'll then see about the front brake. If not, we'll scratch our heads for a while and think real hard...

 

[tWistedWheelz]

Re: Alex's 72 CB750... Mommy's Little Monster...

I do love the sound that an angle grinder makes when ripping into some 40 year old steel! I makes me feel kinda funny, like when I used to climb the rope in gym class!

 

[Deviant1]

Re: Alex's 72 CB750... She's almost done!

First off, I missed my self-imposed deadline. Oh, well. A lot of work has been done since the last update. The bike is cosmetically done at this point. TwistedWheelz and I have put three working sessions on the bike, mostly having to do with paint work. We painted and wet sanded and painted and wet sanded, cleared and wet sanded, etc. etc. I think TwistedWheelz is going to do a how-to on the rattle bomb soon, so I'll spare details. Let's just say it was quite the process, but I believe we have created a nice lookng paint job that is as durable as it can get considering the materials we used. We put some black trim molding around the bottom of the tank and tail and that had the desired effect. Late in the process we made a blemish in the paint right beside the filler cap. I had wanted to spray an area of bedliner around the cap area to a) pull some black up onto the tank and b) offer me a bit of protection from spilling gas on the paint, and c) hide the mistake. so we made a template, taped it off and shot it with bedliner. In the near future I'm going to lay a black pinstripe around the edge of the bedlined area to hide some very small areas along the line where the bedliner meets the orange paint (spray on bedliner does not enjoy being taped ). We also installed the tail light in the hole in the back of the seat. There is a piece of screen from and old window screen over the opening, and it looks very sweet indeed. I'm confident that the l.e.d. taillight will still shine through it brightly. We also made some drag guards for my pipes out of an old chrome grip I had lying around. We cut the grip in half and cut the side off of it then hose clamped it to the pipes. The hose clamps will be painted black in the near future. The last thing we did was reassembly. We still have a wiring issue to sort out ("It worked fine when we took it apart...). But I'm going to get some help on that one. Other things that are left:1) I need to rebuild my front caliper and install it 2)I need to make a new tag mount, but I've got it figured out, I just need to get it done 3) I need to get my throttle cables shortened. Here are some pics of the bike as it sits now.

When the bike is completely done and running I'll take it some place purty and get some pics of it with my good camera to put in show'n'shine. But there she is, I'm very happy with how the bike looks. It turned out way better than I thought it would. I had intended to create a cheap, ratty cafe in all black, but as it progressed we began to realize that we were able to do much better. The orange was perfect, I think, as flat black would have made the bike look unfinished. Anyway the bike has come together as well as it could have. TwistedWheelz and I go way back like car seats and we've always talked about building a bike together, and it's turned out better than either one of us started off thinking it would be. Next up we're going to work on tearing down his 750 motor and rebuilding it. I'm going to be on the lookout for a frame for him at Barber, and we're going to build him a bike next. Anyway big thanks to my bro Brandon, as this bike wouldn't have come out nearly as good without his help and input.

 

[VonYinzer]

Re: Alex's 72 CB750... She's almost done!

Awesome! Great job. Your build goes to show that expensive tools and equipment are nice if you can afford em' but not at all neccessary to build a really cool bike. Guys in the 60's and 70's didn't have 1/2 of the equipment we do today, and still built bikes we're emulating and trying to one-up 40 years later! Once again, great job! Its builds like yours that keep me going when i start to think im getting in over my head.

 

[dcmspikes]

Re: Alex's 72 CB750... She's almost done!

shit yeah. looks good. nice work guys

 

[valvesprung]

Re: Alex's 72 CB750... She's almost done!

Nice work mate, that seat profiled is just DIALED!

 

[Curbcast]

Re: Alex's 72 CB750... She's almost done!

Are those smaller then usual rubbers? I like the look of the thinner tires on this thing (if they are smaller then usual)

 

[Deviant1]

Re: Alex's 72 CB750... She's almost done!

Thanks a ton guys! It's great to hear kind words, as this is my first bike build. This place is just awesome. This forum and the people on it have inspired me to no limit. It's just a great place to come and learn with a very minimal amount of douche-baggery.
Curb: the tires are just Avon Roadriders in the stock size for this bike. I agree that they look good though. Seems like they're becoming the standard rubber for cafes nowadays.
Thanks again guys.

 

[tWistedWheelz]

Re: Alex's 72 CB750... She's almost done!

I agree man, I have always been a sport bike guy, you introduced me to DTT and I am hooked! I am chomping at the bit to get going on my CB750 cafe build. Thanks to you and the DTT family.

 

[biker_reject]

Re: Alex's 72 CB750... She's almost done!

Excellent thread! I admire the amount of time you were able to do this project. I'm going on a year with my build... Sigh! :