Bare metal cb350 twin

[mazdog355]

Hi all,

A friend gave me this bike about 4 years ago, recently decided to add it to my collection of unfinished projects.

I'm going minimalist on this build, bare metal showing as much as possible and lots of weight loss .

I've been working on it for 3 months on and off, anyway here's some progress pics.

Pretty ugly so far, there's more

 

[mazdog355]

i pity the fool who makes a shop rag outta me!

 

[mazdog355]

I quickly realized polishing by hand is a pain in the ass and fingertips

 

[BlueCB360]

I'm watching. I like the gas tank rear cowl. More!!

 

[mazdog355]

Glad you like it, here's some pics i took recently.

 

[7aliveatlast7]

sweet, i'm following. you had me at "bare metal."

 

[trek97]

the tank/rear fender idea is great. Nekkid is cool. It would also be neat if you had two identical tanks, same stock paint and graphics and about the same original condition and leave em as is to match.

 

[gnarshread]

That's really cool man. I'm contemplating going with a bare metal tank and seat and this only encourages me more. I doubt I'll go as far as you but are you going to strip the frame back to bare metal as well? Cant wait to see how it turns out.

 

[mazdog355]

I'm thinking about going bare with the frame as well, not sure yet .

Here's the latest pics. The cowl is going to be mounted farther back then that and i need to find someone in the area with a TIG welder to fill in the original badge mount underneath the wings so i can smooth it out. I was thinkin i might try and fill it with solder but i i think the color would be a bit off.

I like the Identical tanks idea Trek, finding them might be a little hard for me as i'm trying to do a budget build here. so far I've got $0 into the project...Wait, I take that back, I just ordered a pair of mikuni VM32s...

 

[mazdog355]

Then again maybe it looks ok like this, at first i thought it looked kinda like putting a band-aid on a war wound but i think it's growing on me.

 

[AlphaDogChoppers]

I agree with your first thought. Either badge over the original badge mount, or have it welded in.

You will need a skilled welder to make it work. It's not so easy to just "fill in" with weld. It will tend to have a low area as a margin around any weld, so getting it to finish off without blemishes is not easy.

 

[gnarshread]

Are you going to clear coat everything to protect it?

 

[mikewerx]

Nice work man. Wish my tank was dentless so I could just go bare bones. so clean. are you croming everything, polishing? or just leaving brushed?

 

[mazdog355]

Gonna keep it brushed, probably going to clear the frame, but going to use some kinda metal protectant on the tank and cowl, some people at work have suggested Rem oil gun oil or even just plain car wax. Either way i'm definitely going to have to keep it outta the weather as much as possible.

Made some progress the last couple days.

Gotta add some metal to the corners on the cowl

well, it's a start on the seat, i think i'm going to go with snaps to hold the vinyl . And BTW that electric serving knife worked slicker than poop to cut the foam, Just don't tell the woman... :-X

Got my mikunis in the mail today, so I slapped all the engine covers together and bolted 'em on, just to see.

Definitely have to do some serious porting.

 

[mazdog355]

Worked on the seat today. First time making one like this. i think it turned out ok, I still need to shape the foam a little better and the vinyl i used is super thin.

 

[Bobbed_out]

Pretty fly!

 

[mazdog355]

I was trying to think of an easy way to make the original badge mounts on the tank more "better looking" ,so i cut some strips from the donor tank, stripped and roughly polished them, then glued 'em to the tank. looks better than before. Also started de-spoking the rims for a good cleaning/polishing.
I had the brainstorm to polish some stripes into the tank/cowl, how cool is that?

 

[Wangofree]

That tank is the bomb. I like the cover strips, and the polishing stripe is perfect. Understated, but very cool. Keep it coming.

 

[mazdog355]

Having a bit of a tank crisis because i did something retarded this weekend, earlier i had the brainstorm to add knee dents to my perfect tank. I knew i would have to be very careful if i wanted to keep it bare metal because the slightest dent would show, well here's what i ended up with. :-[

the good:

the bad:

the ugly:

Kinda disappointed with the result, so i brainstormed some more, and came up with another great plan...I've always wanted a longer tank, so i'm planning on shaping , applying a few layers of FG, bondo , and paint to the '69 tank, shorten the seat ...no more bare metal tank

on a positive note, i got my pistons in the mail this week, and bought a "fat" cam and rockers on ebay for cheap, a little pitted, but usable. I'm gonna run that until i save up enough for a Megacycle regrind on the original late type cam.

 

[7aliveatlast7]

i think if you smoothed out the knee dents with filler, masked them off, and painted just the dents while leaving the rest of the tank bare, it would look pretty cool! pick a color for the dents, something complimentary as a pinstripe around it, leave the rest raw, then clear coat the whole thing? what do you think? you might not have to completely sacrifice your initial idea!