Honda CX 500 first Café build

I just brought this from a guy in London, and I'm off to collect it tomorrow. It will be my first Café build, but I'm no stranger to building bikes so I'm quite excited about the new build.



I'll post lots of pix of my progress over the coming months and welcome any positive input.

This is my last project, a CBR 900RR Fireblade streetfighter.



It has the D.N.A. of a café racer.

I hope when my CX500 is done I'm looking at something as awesome as this builders creation.

Or this bad boy

Welcome to the madhouse IED. Nice looking project, just keep coming back with progress reports!

Thanks mate.

Well I got it home today and got it naked.



I thought it would be fun to flip the bars and use the clock binicle to mock up a seat pod

Good start Bud, mine came naked, well actually it came in a series of cardboard boxes, but I suppose that saved me stripping it down!



I also went the 'fighter' route with a Yamaha XJR1200







Renthals, custom black metal flake and 4:2:1 race system, that was the only bike I ever regret selling!

X12 looks right tasty mate, nice job. I know what you mean mate, its hard to sell them when you put so much in.

Well tonight mostly I are bin washing crap off parts. Its a bit of a minger at the moment but I'm enjoying every minute of it.

Where in Essex are you? I now live in Scotland, but grew up in Wanstead (still technically Essex) Ilford, Newbury Park, Brentwood and Ongar before migrating gradually North.

Got in tonight and decided to drop the motor out. Great thing about the CX is there only seems to be two sizes of nut and bolt. Big and small, so I used big spanners to undo the big nuts and small spanners to undo all the small nuts.



I really wish I paid attention how it came out

pauliexjr wrote:

Where in Essex are you? I now live in Scotland, but grew up in Wanstead (still technically Essex) Ilford, Newbury Park, Brentwood and Ongar before migrating gradually North.

I'm in Harwich mate.

I'm gonna take off the calipers and a few other bits and bobs then keep a rolling chasis to do the mock up and make a couple of frame alterationd before I finish tearing it down to go off to powdercoat.

Thermostat housing was showing signs it had been leaking for a while. stripped it apart and all the O rings had perrished, so they are all gonna need to be replaced. Full gasket set for one of these on ebay is only about 30 quid.

while I have it off I gave it a face lift.

Nitroed the tank too

I tride Nitromors on my tank, the new green, gloopy stuff, it did s*d all, just sat there and sulked!

I wound up stripping the thing with a rotary wire brush on an electric drill. Took forever as there were 3 layers of paint and the one in the middle was a type of twin pack/polymer product which didn't so much strip as melt, a right pig!

I also used the green gloopy stuff and it did nothing for about 20 minutes then went nuts so I decided to cover it in polythene and leave it over night.

This morning it was stripped down to the metal. I would recomend you apply it then walk away and let it do its job.

Anyway, tank stripped, rubbed down, now its time to start filling and getting fid of 30 years worth of dinks and those horrible tank badges.

Ok, after a couple of fils and knocking it back I went over it and looked for anymore tiny dinks





I like to circle them as I find them so I dont miss any.





I aint a fan of the machine weld they use on tanks so I like to wipe round the tank with a little filler then knock it back to smooth tha edge right off.



This is what I mean. I filled the edge's of the tank on my blade to get a nice smooth finish. Perhaps no one else notices it, but I know its there.



Anyway, sanded of and wiped with meths to get rid of dust and greasey finger marks





Now a blast of primer. In a couple of days I will knock it back with 1200 wet and dry and look for any more minute dinks.

Nice job and I like the idea of filling the tank welds.

Tried leaving the stripper overnight covered with cling-film, but no joy.

Yep, I've also ditched the tank badges and filled a couple of small dents.

I also extended the filler neck with a piece of 56mm (2 1/43 in) pipe brazed to the original filler neck. I then cut a hole in the filler flap, slipped the flap over the new neck and brazed it into place. I then cut the new pipe back to around 10mm above the tank with an angle grinder and filled and sanded round the tank flap to blend it into the tank profile.

I'm now applying black paint and the decals and will finally bond on a nice Moza-style flip-up tank cap I got off Flea-bay for 25 quid.

I'll post piccies when it's finished :-)

Sounds good mate, I'm lookin forward to seeing it. Pix soon fella.

I'v been thinking about making my own seat from fiberglass but wondering how I could get a profile of all the frame mounting points. The I rembered the seat it came with and thought I could get a cast from it.

After removing the cover and foam I discovered the seat pan was made of fiberglass. Well then, half the job has been done for me, now all I need to do is trim off some of the fat and make a pod.



Should be quite easy to adapt



And Fiberglass sticks to fiberglass really good.

Right then, on to it.

I cut the high point off the fiberglass seat pan and trimed both edges with my jigsaw



Then made up a form for the pod I will cast then graft onto the pan. The MDF form will be filled with expanding foam then sanded into shape and fine filled. From this I will take a cast and produce a mould to reproduce the finished pod.



Shape looks right



As does the height.



During the week I'll get it preped ready for fiberglass.



Lots of other things to be getting on with for now so I'll do a bit more tomorrow.

Ok, back to this for a minute.



I filled the voids with some polyfoam packaging blocks then sanded them sub-surface of the frame edges. The reason for this is, If I fiberglass straight onto the polyfoam it will melt as the glass starts to cure, and I wont get a crisp finish to cast my mould.



I used construction filler to go over the whole plug and I'll sand it back to the spines that form the frame work.



It will need a few more fills and sand to get it right, but it will be worth all the effort.

Does anyone know how to get the fan off the front of the CX motor?