My CL200 build

Ralph74

New Member
Got this bike from a family member when I was 15. Pulled out of a barn in south Georgia. When we would visit the farm when my brother and I were little kids my dad would drive us both on this bike to the nearest town for ice cream. I would sit on the tank and my brother on the back with my dad driving. Probably frowned upon these days. Anyway, my dad and I pulled the bike from the barn where it had been sitting for a number of years. This bike was my first restoration. I've done 7-8 since then. My dad basically financed the operation and taught me everything I now know.

The bike sat in my dad's garage when I went off to college in 1997 and sat there ever since. He died a few years back from prostate cancer (go get checked!!!!!) and his widow wanted the bike out of the garage. Here is what it looked like when I brought it home in October of 2019.
 

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Took the bike down to the basement and started mocking things up.

My goal was to keep it pretty stock with some tasteful updates.

Cut the muffler off, chopped the fenders a little bit. The side panels basically crumbled when I took them off so there was no point in trying to save them.
 

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After I had a decent mockup I stripped every single nut and bolt off the bike. All wiring etc. Welded on some side panels to keep the CL200 logos and hide the small battery box.

Then took everything to the powdercoater. Gloss black everything.
 

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Anyway...for those with short attention spans...here is a link to what the bike looked like this past weekend. I won't post pic's as spoilers but here is a link

https://imgur.com/gallery/aSIE2e

Add a ' m ' to the end of the link above. Just the letter m. No spaces or quotes. I ad to remove it so the forum would auto embed the pictures in the post.

I will keep posting the step by step to hopefully help others down the road. Don't click the link if you want to follow along. Bike is now very close to done (for now). I will never sell it and will pass it down to my kids. Which means I will be tinkering with it for years to come.
 
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Ok, back to the build. While the frame and wheels and fenders, etc were at the powdercoater I did all of the cleanup/rebuild work to the other parts. Carbs, gauges, etc.
 

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I bought carb rebuild kits with the intention of swapping in all new parts. However, ever close examination of some of the 'new' rebuild parts, I actually ended up using most of my original brass, etc. A couple of the new jets were not drilled cleanly or accurately. I did use the new floats and so far have not had any issues with those.
 
Got all of my parts back from the powdercoater and they look great. You can see I left the inner rear fender in place. I did trim it up before I sent it to get coated so it was symmetrical. While I do like the look of an uncluttered triangle, I dont really think it is practical for keeping dirt and mud from slinging directly under the seat and all over the back of the engine and carbs. I think what I ended up with was a nice compromise.

And oh yeah, please pardon the lighting situation for most of these build pics. It took place in my basement and the lighting is not great.
 

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First thing I did was to cleanup the wiring harness and reinstall it. It wasnt as bad as I thought it was going to be. Had to make some modifications for a few things. Also had to rearrange everything that goes under the seat to fit with my new battery situation. Here is what I ended up with.
 

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Bought a new set of lower gloss black handlebars and got everything mounted up front. Had to drill all of my own holes to run the wiring. That was a pain in the ass. Gauges all cleaned up.
 

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All new wheel bearings, swingarm bearings, and steering bearings. Started to fit the frame all back together. I wanted to get the bike off of the ATV jack and onto the centerstand. It wasnt very secure on the ATV jack and I was getting worried it was going to tip over. Probably took the rear wheel back off 12 times after this. I also ended up removing the rear sprocket cover and modifying everything back there so the sprocket bolts would not hit the inner rear shock lower mount. Put in solid lower shock mount bushings as well.
 

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After I was satisfied with the rear setup, I moved to the front. I didnt like the bike being supported by that one old shock tube any more than you do. I ended up buying 2 front shock tubes off of ebay because both of mine were slightly bent. Full rebuild of both tubes and got the lowers powdercoated gloss black. Took me forever to find some headlight mounts that would fit the diameter of these tubes correctly. Im happy how these turned out. Very solid. Also had to figure out how to make the shock billows look stock and seal correctly at the top.

Lots of little modifications that nobody would even notice if I didnt point them out. Like the internal routing of the rear brake switch wiring....and the rear sprocket modifications...
 

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At this point it was about time to toss the dirty engine back in there and figure out what I was going to do with the exhaust. After a bunch of research and thinking things out I decided to go with straight pipes all the way to the back. Bought some tubing online and started welding them up. Here is a couple pics of the mockup.
 

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I forgot to add above that you can see the start of me trying to figure out a velocity stack solution. Ended up using those exhaust couplers I got at the flaps. They fit almost perfectly. No frame modifications either.
 
Thanks for the tip. I use that stuff at work sometimes. Fortunately at this point I have the wiring completely working. I removed the horn because I didnt like its stock location. I will probably install a hidden one at some point. I also did the modification to the wiring in the headlight bucket to send full charging power regardless of H/L beam switch. The REG/REC I got from SparcMoto is working great so far. Oh yeah, I also swapped the headlight bulb out with an LED version that saves a bunch of power.
 
Here is a pic showing the clearance I had to open up with the rear sprocket for the shock to mount safely. Worked out very well in the end but it certainly took a few days to get it all figured out.
 

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Here are the baffles I ended up using for my exhaust. They fit perfect and are good quality:


I drilled a hole on the inside end of my tubing and welded on a nut so I could use a bolt to take them out if needed.
 
Here is how I ended up mounting and hiding the SparcMoto reg/rec...
 

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