Korsch_RS
Active Member
Hello DTT,
Long time lurker, first time poster here. I got bit by the motorcycle bug a while ago after spending a weekend trail riding dirt bikes with my gf and her family. Unfortunately I live in the urban paradise of the Detroit Metro area, so my trail riding options are limited. I stumbled on a few pictures of café racers on the net, and I was hooked. I decided to start looking for a CB350 for my first bike and as a café project.
So this is the bike I found for my project. It’s a 1971 Honda CB350 that I picked up in October 2011. It’s a little rough around the edges aesthetically, but runs well and was the right price, and the previous owner brought it to my house on his trailer (I don’t have a truck/trailer and no motorcycle endorsement at the time). It had a few electrical gremlins when I bought it, but nothing relating to it running properly. After painting the terrible red side covers flat black, and replacing the rear wheel/tire with one that didn’t have dry rot and had a decent sprocket (both included in the sale by the PO, see the picture of the old one, yikes!), I was off and riding.
I rode it around stock for the last few weeks of reasonable weather here, and then brought it inside for some work over the winter.
Unfortunately, my car decided to have a few things break one right after another, and combining that with road trips and the holidays, nothing really got done on the CB. Finally a little over a week ago I was able to get started.
I got the whole thing stripped down to a bare frame, and started de-tabbing and seam welding. I decided to leave the center stand mounts on there for now, so that I can use it for future work if I want. I’m painting the frame instead of powdercoat, so if I want to modify something in the future I can touch it up a lot easier.
Plan is to do a fairly standard cafe conversion, and rewire the whole bike with more modern components wherever possible, and then spend the summer riding it. I'm trying to keep things simple for now, so hopefully I can be done in time for most of the riding season here.
More elaborate build plan:
Phase 1 - hoping to finish this up end of April. Get the bike resotred and mildly cafe-ed (is that how you spell that?). I'm trying to do a good job on all the components that are difficult to get too (like the frame, wiring harness, etc...). Easier components will be reinstalled as-is to get the bike running and riding quickly.
Phase 1.5 - will be happening this summer. This will be doing the weekend projects to finish out the resto-mod. Things like new tires, cleaned up and painted wheels, new rear shocks, etc...
Phase 2 - winter 2012/13. Take everything back apart, get the frame sandblasted and powdercoated (assuming I'm happy with it and won't be adding anymore brackets), full engine rebuild with more power! and possibly a more modern front end. Not sure If i want to go full out with inverted forks or maybe just something still vintage looking but better than the stock early 350 forks, like 550 forks or similar.
More soon!
Long time lurker, first time poster here. I got bit by the motorcycle bug a while ago after spending a weekend trail riding dirt bikes with my gf and her family. Unfortunately I live in the urban paradise of the Detroit Metro area, so my trail riding options are limited. I stumbled on a few pictures of café racers on the net, and I was hooked. I decided to start looking for a CB350 for my first bike and as a café project.
So this is the bike I found for my project. It’s a 1971 Honda CB350 that I picked up in October 2011. It’s a little rough around the edges aesthetically, but runs well and was the right price, and the previous owner brought it to my house on his trailer (I don’t have a truck/trailer and no motorcycle endorsement at the time). It had a few electrical gremlins when I bought it, but nothing relating to it running properly. After painting the terrible red side covers flat black, and replacing the rear wheel/tire with one that didn’t have dry rot and had a decent sprocket (both included in the sale by the PO, see the picture of the old one, yikes!), I was off and riding.
I rode it around stock for the last few weeks of reasonable weather here, and then brought it inside for some work over the winter.
Unfortunately, my car decided to have a few things break one right after another, and combining that with road trips and the holidays, nothing really got done on the CB. Finally a little over a week ago I was able to get started.
I got the whole thing stripped down to a bare frame, and started de-tabbing and seam welding. I decided to leave the center stand mounts on there for now, so that I can use it for future work if I want. I’m painting the frame instead of powdercoat, so if I want to modify something in the future I can touch it up a lot easier.
Plan is to do a fairly standard cafe conversion, and rewire the whole bike with more modern components wherever possible, and then spend the summer riding it. I'm trying to keep things simple for now, so hopefully I can be done in time for most of the riding season here.
More elaborate build plan:
Phase 1 - hoping to finish this up end of April. Get the bike resotred and mildly cafe-ed (is that how you spell that?). I'm trying to do a good job on all the components that are difficult to get too (like the frame, wiring harness, etc...). Easier components will be reinstalled as-is to get the bike running and riding quickly.
Phase 1.5 - will be happening this summer. This will be doing the weekend projects to finish out the resto-mod. Things like new tires, cleaned up and painted wheels, new rear shocks, etc...
Phase 2 - winter 2012/13. Take everything back apart, get the frame sandblasted and powdercoated (assuming I'm happy with it and won't be adding anymore brackets), full engine rebuild with more power! and possibly a more modern front end. Not sure If i want to go full out with inverted forks or maybe just something still vintage looking but better than the stock early 350 forks, like 550 forks or similar.
More soon!
I blew second gear on my old Subaru (01 2.5RS) pulling into a parking lot, so I try to be careful with the Subie transmissions nowadays.
