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There is life outside the garage, and there is a God - England beat Wales in the Rugby whilst I enjoyed a couple of pints of fine Welsh ale on the day I started work on the frame. It's called Rev James, made by Brains and not for the faint hearted. Not that I have anything against Wales but there has to be a loser, and that day's loser wass the rusty heap of scrap masquerading as a Honda frame. It was by that time down to the bare essentials, having been chemically and mechanically stripped of most of its coating, but there was much work to be done. It had to be de-lugged and stripped back to bare metal. De-lugging is easy, if noisy and messy. Take one angle grinder, a large hammer and make sure the neighbours are out. I could not persuade the neighbours to go out so repaired to the field next to the house and set to. All the lugs and fittings were ground off to save weight and make a cleaner looking frame. The top and rear seams were welded to strengthen the spot welding that suffices for road use. A bracing strut was welded in to the top rail and supports for the tank and seat were considered. As I had neither of these at the time, the supports were just tacked in at roughly the place I thought they would fit. All welding was carried out with a MIG welder to save distortion but in reality. an arc welder would have been just as effective. I also welded in brackets for the rear set footrests which I made myself from 10mm alloy plate. The left hand side of the swinging arm had a bracket welded on for the "Sharks Fin" and was drilled at the spindle flanges to accommodate the stand bobbins.
The entire frame was sanded and coated with 2 Pack acrylic in a delicate shade of black. This is nasty stuff..... Every precaution was taken in terms of eye and lung protection. The catalyst for this stuff is attracted to water (eyes!) and the paint itself causes respiratory problems so every care was required. I have to say that the paint was nowhere near as tough as I thought it would be. It seems to mark and scratch more easily than I would have thought. Maybe I mixed the components incorrectly, who knows. It is reasonably tough but chips if hit with a spanner so caution is required when fitting components (no bad thing). Above is a diagram showing what work was required to make the frame itself suitable for the conversion. For the sake of clarity. only one side is shown, and the bracket for the sharks fin has been omitted. The bracket for the left hand rearset hanger is shown below.
The fork legs and chrome lower shrouds which I was told are extremely difficult to remove without causing damage, proved to be just that. The chrome shrouds were too rusty to be of any use but that wasn't the point. I wanted to remove them by the most subtle method available. The manual says the shrouds can be removed once the fork legs have been separated from the yokes by tapping the slot in them with a blunt screwdriver. Not for me this one. It's true the shrouds are a tight fit but I had a plan. Two jubilee clips joined, some of that rubbery stuff you can get from the Pound Shop to stop things slipping off your car dashboard, and the job's a good 'un. I secured the clips around the shrouds using the rubber stuff as a gasket, and simply tapped the shrouds off. Here is the wherewithal for this which I believe is self explanatory.
The forks were then easily stripped, all the butchered screws removed. As I intended to fit a small race type mudguard, the screw threads for the original brackets were redundant so I machined and fitted blanking plugs for neatness. Once satisfied with the aesthetics, I buffed them with polishing 'blue' wax, replaced the seals, sprayed the bottom yoke black and reassembled them. The alloy top yoke was welded by a local company after several abortive attempts to buy a replacement for the cracked one. The welder did a fabulous job leaving me to fine finish and polish the component before fitting. I replaced the ball bearing head races with taper roller ones. The original ball bearings were pitted and fit for nothing but scrap. The bearings required were an odd size, reflected in the odd price required by those selling them. For a far more realistic price, I purchased a set with the correct internal and external sizes, although slightly narrower, from Simply Bearings and made up a thin spacer, only about 1mm thick, to give clearance but that was a simple turning task on the lathe. A set of stainless steel clip-ons were purchased for a stupidly small price from eBay and the clamping bolts replaced with stainless steel allen bolts. A pair of Triumph Unit Twin fork gaiters completed the forks and tidied everything up. The rear suspension dampers that came with the bike were original and seemed to work well when bench tested. The chrome shrouds were rusty as were the dampers themselves but there was no sign of any leakage so I decided to run with them. I stripped and primed the dampers, re-plated the adjusting collars and sprayed the springs silver. They actually looked very good but then along came a pair of Marrazoccis at a price I couldn't resist so I bought them. When I checked, I found one damper rod was slightly bent so a new one was made from silver steel and new seals fitted. These units really are good - every part is replaceable so on the bike they went. One of the reported problems with the CB frame is its poor handling so these should improve that no end. Here endeth the saga of the frame and forks. |
