November 2010
2 posts
October 2009
1 post
She's gone.
It took me way too long to post up the fact that Rocky is sold. Didn’t expect her to sell so quick, so I put her on craigslist and in under 24 hours she was gone. Craziness. Anyway, on to the next project. I learned a whole lot about bikes, that’s the whole reason I bought the bike to begin with.
Enjoy these last few photos that were snapped of her before she was sold.
...
September 2009
1 post
She rides.
So, for the past week, Rocky has been on the road. She’s like 98% complete too. All she basically needs now is a proper side mount for her plate (currently zip ties are working fantastically) and a dedicated brake light. The two small lights work great now as running lights and brakes, but that means no blinkers. She doesn’t have the right wiring to have the two light be running, brakes and...
August 2009
1 post
She grew a pair.
Alrighty. Let’s keep this short. Yes, I’m still waiting on a fender. But, I ordered one from a guy that I think is going to fit. It will be here this week, so I’ll know soon enough. I fabricated some brackets for the solo seat and it looks and functions great. It’s not on in any of the photos because I haven’t got the right hardware for it yet. But that’s easy stuff. You can see the mega-ghetto...
July 2009
2 posts
Waiting.
All of the wiring (minus the rear blinkers and brake light) is buttoned up. I’ve got the ignition relocated and working perfectly. It looks a lot better in person than it does in the photos of it. I also redid the instrument cluster. I moved everything to sit below the bars, right above the tank. I really like the way it came out. You don’t have to.
On to the struts, you know, the perfect struts...
She's apart again.
Good news is that I’m not feeling quite like a failure yet. Bad news is that I may feel like one in a few days. My struts arrived, and they’re beautiful. Big props to Andrew Clough (adc.florida@gmail.com) for building them together for me. They feel and look really, really high quality and his pricing is superb.
My sparto light came in and it’s awesome. But, I have no fender to mount it to....
June 2009
5 posts
Getting there.
Here’s a not-so-exciting entry, but still worthy of posting. My solo seat (with hardware) and key finally arrived. Hopefully this weekend I’ll be mounting that so I can ride ass over tire for a while. I picked up a fender ($15) and some fender supports ($2) at a swap meet this weekend and forgive me for being pessimistic, but I think cutting the fender to be just right is going to be tough. I’ve...
Not quite perfect.
It was a pleasant weekend of almost failure. I attempted to fit the new rear fender, but had no success. The drag specialties fender I purchased was 6” wide, but it didn’t fit over the rear tire the way I wanted it to, so I took it back and got a 7.5” one, which should arrive here one day this week. I’m hoping it’s not too wide, but it may be. Then I’ll be sad.
I did, however, chop up the...
Nu shooz.
Rocky got a little classy this week. Her new tires got put on and her gold chain and I’m digging the way it turned out (you’ll see some pics of the white wall before I cleaned the blue protective junk off of them). The rear tire looks so much wider than the stock one, cause it is so much wider. I didn’t think it would fill the rear fender as much as it did, so now I actually can’t even ride...
Lets hit the bars.
With a little bit of time on my hands over the weekend and today, I put a few new parts on Rocky. I placed some Lamin-x film over the headlight to tint it yellow. The new handle bars are on and great. For those considering putting some drag-style bars on their bike, do it. I tossed the front turn signals too, looks so much cleaner. The new grips are nice and squishy and reduce vibration pretty...
Packages.
A few new parts have arrived. Tires, bars, bullet blinkers and chain have all arrived. Picked up some spiked bolts for the engine from a fellow Rebel owner. Well, fellow previous owner. She sold her maximum-sickness bobber. Whatevs, the bolts should be here soon. Other than that, my turn signals stopped working and my brake light is always on. I’ll get to both of those issues once I start taking...
May 2009
6 posts
Ride away home.
Toad took this photo yesterday on my ride home from work. He’s always spying on me. Weird.
Vroooooom.
Accomplishing goals feels so great. After getting the bike running last week, I figured I’d need to do some fine tuning, but after cruising around for a bit and putting the velocity stack on, Rocky is running great. No stutters, no hiccups, nada. What does that mean? That means its time to get going on making the bike look better and older and cooler and faster. Below you’ll find photos of how I...
Breath easy.
Since the bike wasn’t running and I had a little bit of downtime, I decided to remove the whole air box mess from the bike. I’m going for a vintage look, so the less plastic and extra nonsense that I have on the bike the better, but it doesn’t hurt to make it it little easier for the engine to get air. Turns out there were a ton of tubes, a carbon canister, some little random junction box...
She's back. Almost.
Got everything buttoned back up, put some new gaskets on the bike and checked everything twice before starting it, but the battery was dead. Soooo, I gave it a jump and got it running. It sounded great, but then it died. Thought it might be gas, but there is plenty in the tank. Tried and tried again, with and without the choke on, blah blah blah, never got it running though. So, I’m going to have...
Teared up.
I torn down the bike yesterday. Not a complete tear down, just the necessary parts to swap the power plant. That’s right – Power Plant, cause it’s like 17 crazy horsepower or some huge number like that. It only took my about an hour and a half to do, working solo. In the process I learned that the brackets for the clutch cable are smaller on the new engine than on the old one (you can see the...
So it's been a while. Whatever.
As you can tell from the photos taken before, the engine needed a little cleaning up. Plans were to make the engine look all pretty before putting the transplant, but plans have changed. From past experiences I’ve learned that it’s smarter to make sure everything is good to go mechanically before worrying about aesthetics. So after some wire brushing, sanding, wet ragging and brake clean the...
March 2009
2 posts
And then, there was engine
New engine got here today. It shipped here incredibly fast from Mississippi and despite the questionable packaging it seems to be in pretty great shape. Pictures of the packaging and product are below. More to come.
In the beginning
The haps:
I’m starting with a stock 1985 Honda Rebel CMX250. I purchased the bike in August of 2008 and it pretty much took a seat in my garage for a few months. I brought the registration up to date in February 2009 and started taking the bike for short cruises to make sure everything was good to go mechanically before I started wasting money on cosmetics. A couple weeks ago I took the bike in...