Some Tech Stuff

I'm first and foremost a techie, this bike building thing is new to me. but one of my favorite sites here, ZAGG, is doing a sweet giveaway every hour, on the hour for all of black friday. Just enter your info, and share on facebook or twitter for more entries. I participated in the iPad-a-day giveaway-- hoping to have more luck with this!

http://www.zagg.com/community/contest.php

Promise

I've got two days that I need to get working on my bike again. No school, no work, girlfriends in the other side if the country, I'm gonna get this thing going again tomorrow.

Think I'll start putting it together actually, don't have the money for gaskets and I think I'm gonna skip painting the motor, I've heard nothing but criticisms of the idea.

Let's try this again

Haven't done any work on my bike all summer, even though I was hoping to have the whole thing done halfway through. But I've picked it back up in the past couple weeks. Switched high schools for my senior year(only 30 min away), but I already got some new friends that are helping me out again, a couple that heled painted the frame. Just a couple days ago I went and picked up the whole thing, all the wiring, tires, exhaust, engine, and about a billion lose juts and bolts, from my friend's house and moved it to my own shop. As I was packing it all up, I felt worse and worse.... I couldn't tell you where half the stuff came from. Its gonna be a rough time getting it back together!
But now its at my house, already built a stand/ work station that I got the motor on for painting, but the whole frame will fit on when I'm putting it back together. My dads helping me out with it now, more about him in the next post.

Big Plans

I suppose I should give a direction to this whole project. I plan to make this into a sweet cafe racer, stripped down to just the necessities and old-style awesomeness.

One of the coolest bikes I've found online is Miob's, (His blog also was what gave me the idea to start my own) @ http://bmwcafe.blogspot.com

And then I found out about Carpy on www.cb750cafe.com and saw a ton of his awesome builds:

(Golden Orb definitely my favorite)

really like the turn signals on this one (those are surprisingly expensive, like $50 a piece) the paint (never gonna get that good) but I CAN do the handlebars. 

But all those are SOHC, while mine is just a couple years newer and DOHC. 

I like the minimal gauges on this, the "all black everything" except the few chrome accents, the fork boots, the clip-ons, the front fender... and those style seats are growing on me. 

I like the headlight visors and painted rims on these... don't think i'd do that though. not with my wheels. 

I like the seat on this one (and the black motor), not the tank so much.

Do two people fit on that? I definitely want a seat two people can sit on- what's a bike good for if you can't take the chicks for rides? :)

this is a japanese bike: i'm thinking about doing that with my wheels and possibly painting the exhaust like that, and was going to paint my headlight black 

this one! i like this a lot, even though it's not a cafe. I like the clip-ons, the whitewalls, the flat black tank, the motor paint, the chopped exhaust and the low stance... 

Now that I've shown all the cool bike pictures I've found, I'll talk about specific parts i'm planning on getting/ making.
- I'm taking off all the giant idiot lights, gauges, and turn signals. going to chop all the mounts off the triple tree, and drill some holes in it, and then I'm gonna rewire some LEDs in place of the little lightbulbs in the idiot lights. I'm looking for a mini speedo (about 2.5") with a white face.
-Paint all engine black (Satin, using VHT)
just like this guy from Australia : http://www.customfighters.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44453
check out his engine, it's really cool
-Paint all frame, engine mounts, most covers, clips, headlight, turn signals, ect dark grey (using a rustoleum primer and some satin clearcoat)
-Eventually replace the air filter box with pod filters, but not in too much of a rush (don't want to mess up the jetting
-Nate is making Clip-on handlebars for me
-going to have my dad laser cut some battery side covers, and then painting those dark grey
-hopefully going to find a cool, minimal 2 person seat or someone that can fashion me a new seat out of the old one.

I have no idea what colors to paint the tank yet, but we've got a really nice paint gun in the shop waiting to be used.

ugh... that's all I can think of now. more to come. also, I made a cool kinda shopping list on the sidebar of what I have and what I have to get.

The Team

I wouldn't be able to even THINK about undertaking a project like this by myself. I am no gearhead, and I wouldn't (didn't) even know where to start with this. This post is to introduce all the people that are helping me make this bike :
Palmer:

Nate:

Me:

Catchup

So, I can't find my pics that I took of it in the taking-apart stages, (found them!) and I haven't been taking pictures. Is this how it always goes at the beginning of a blog?

So, I'll tell how I got to the point I'm at now.
1) Decided to start working on the bike
2) Loaded it up in my friend's truck to take it to his heated garage (turns out, it's not heated. good thing summer's coming)
3) Drove it over there and dumped it.

So, we had the frame with the front wheel and engine in it, two boxes of parts and a toolbox full of screws labeled with pieces of paper telling where they go.

Weekend 1) took the rest apart, except the motor. Disconnected all the electric, cut all the ties to the frame and unwired it all and pulled off the front tire.

Weekend 2) Unbolted the engine mounts (Should have put the motor on a jack so it didn't pull on the last screws, those were real hard to pull out) then pulled out the 300lb motor.

Weekend 4) Started Sandblasting on Friday. Went into it with just a bandanna over my nose and mouth. that was a bad idea- Palmer (My friend who's house it's at) gave it a shot after putting on his welding mask and gloves, and we tried zip tying a box to some crates to get it to stay put, using the box for some backing for the sand, with just a tarp on the ground in the shop.

 

The next day, I was way more successful when set the tarp up to have a back and bottom outside the shop. I finished sandblasting almost everything (Saving the tank for later, don't know what colors to do)
except the frame (about half to go with that).

My dad needs the sandblaster now, so I'll probably be taking a short break for a week. Gotta buy a bunch of spray paint, and start putting on some layers of primer and such. This is my first spray painting project too but, with as well as the sandblasting went, it should be fine!

Start of Blog: Where the Real Building Begins

Just decided to start a blog about my bike, but I've already been working on it for about a month.
It's alright though, because I just got to the point where my experience will become unique: putting it back together.

I got an old 1980 CB750 Custom for free from my dad's friend that didn't use it anymore, and it ran just fine.
After slapping in a new battery, new spark plugs, it started right up and shot a bunch of corn and walnuts some squirrel had stashed in the exhaust.
I had about 6 years before I even got my driver's license, then another 6 before I could get my bike license. That was 6 years to get this bike cleaned up, looking good and road worthy!

Of course, being that young, I had no job and no way to pay for parts. So my dad and I worked on it for one day, tore off the rear wheel, disconnected pretty much all the wires, and a couple covers; the goal being to get it down to the frame so we could paint over some of that rust, maybe make it some crazy color (I was thinking yellow) and paint the ugly oxidized engine black. From that day on, there it sat.

Just like that. Up until a month ago.