1st bike, 1st build CB650

Looking good Dan, BTW, I've got exactrly the same chimanea, small world innit?

Haha, yeah the ride will take a bit of getting used to, I'll just let a bit of air out the tyres should be fine

pauliexjr, yeah very small world.

Going over the wiring loom tonight, and getting the starter motor installed. Will probably bolt the carbs back on as well as they shouldn't take long....getting closer to firing her up now!!

Hello!

I'm back again for one of my increasingly infrequent updates!

Hope everyone had a good Christmas, here's what I've been up to.

Well I don't know about you lot but I am so fed up with this weather. It's been wet and cold for months now and I just don't want to be sitting out on a wet floor messing about with the engine and bolting bits onto the frame.

So I was sorting through things and decided I wasn't happy with the electrics tray at the back made out of metal as it was all going to be quite heavy. So chatting to a bloke at work who used to repair boats for a living he put me onto these people and I bought some supplies http://www.cfsnet.co.uk/. So I made a couple of trays and got everything fixed in place. Once it's painted black it'll look ok and on the plus side be a lot lighter.





When I made the original seat pan and hump I ended up making them in two separate parts and then tried to fibre glass them together. This was OK but the hump sat slightly higher than the line of the seat pan and I wasn't at all happy with the fixing point of the tank being completely open and exposed. So after some reading and looking at what other people have done seat hump 2.0 was born!

I'm making a mold, then a plug to finally make the finished seat pan and hump all in one part. Doing it this way I can paint some gel coat into the plug first to get a better finish on the fibre glassed part.......well this is the plan anyway! Here's some pics















So here's the mold pretty much finished now. Next step is to get it smoothed out as much as possible, get a few coats of releasing wax on it, then lay some fibreglass to make the plug. I'm so much happier with how this looks it flows off the tank down into the seat much better, definitely think it will improve the look of the bike when it's finished.







So not any real progress to be honest, I'm getting to the point now where I don't really know what to do next to get things moving in the right direction.....I've got one box of parts now and I don't know what's the best order to go in from here. I am going to get the tyres off the wheels hopefully tomorrow and get them prepped for paint. Then get the swing arm and rear suspension mounted and get the wheels back on so I have something that actually looks like a bike again hopfully that'll get me going in the right direction.

Does anyone here have any recommendations for clip on handlebars? There seems to be a massive amount of choice out there and I really don't know what are good or bad ones? Or anything to look for when buying them, you see some cheaper one's in Hong Kong that look OK but then similar handlebars in the UK can go for £130?

Cheers!

Dan.

Hi Dan, for clip-ons go UK or European. My experience with Chinese products if it's plastic it's fantastic, if it's metal it's sub-standard and anything chromed peels within months! Unity Equipe do a good range of clip ons http://www.unityequipe.com/ , or have a look on E-bay, there's sometimes some good standard second-hand kit knocking about.

Ah brilliant the unity equipe stuff looks really good I'll get in touch with them!

Got a layer of fiberglass on the mold today I'll see how that feels when it's set and maybe put another layer on

Cheers!

nice shape seat unit,always interested in how you guys are working with fibre glass

Happy New Year everyone!!

Well I've got 2013 off with a bang an almighty epic fail!! lol

The mold separation didn't go as well as hoped

The foam blocks I used wasn't strong enough for the mold to release with out taking half the blocks with it! So needless to say that is a non starter. Back to the drawing board now.....going to do what I should have done last time and use a wooden base which will be much stronger. I should be able to keep a more uniform shape with this as well so fingers crossed the end result will be better again. It's all a learning process!!

So onto seat hump 3.0!!

Hi everyone,

So I'm only 17 months over the original 6 months I thought this would take me.... For a first build I think I may have bitten off a little more that I can chew but I will not be beaten!

I'll try to keep this short, so I had the engine back together and tried to start it.  This led to a whole host of carb based problems mainly of the fuel leaking out of the over flows randomly.  Gaskets, float adjustments never made any difference so I carefully threw them to one side.  After a lot of reading I saw this forum post http://www.hondacb650.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=722&start=0 and I picked up some carbs from a Kawasaki Ninja.  I finally got the engine running!!  It wasn't running great and I noticed that cylinder 1 wasn't always firing....anyway I ended up opening the engine up again and found the piston rings on cylinder 1 were stuck in the ring landings.  I tried to ease the top ring out and it snapped....I think I may have swore at this point but I'm not sure.  I couldn't find replacement rings and I couldn't find the same pistons so I had to order some oversize pistons from the US.  And I now need to get the cylinder block bored to accept these new pistons but hopefully once that's done all should be good.

I've had 4 or 5 attempts at a seat now lol.  I think the current attempt should crack it.  I seem to have trouble separating the mold from the fibreglass but I'm getting there.

Here's where I'm up to at least it looks like a bike again I suppose!