Retro Joe's Cafe (racer)

Accumulated Wealth

2009-06-27T11:14:00.000-07:00

I promise that I have neither stopped working on the bike nor stopped posting here. As proof I give you the image below. This is the majority of the bike's old and new parts. Either after being prepped, waiting to be prepped or fresh from the catalog. This is the boring bit of bike building. Shortly, exciting things will happen.

Day Four: Spring Cleaning

2009-04-27T23:11:00.000-07:00

Nothing too fancy to report. Yesterday mostly entailed cleaning up the frame so I can take it to the welder. I made a phone call to a small shop in Alameda, CA and I believe I've made a good choice. Saturday it will be TIG welded up. I'll have a before and after post later on.

I tried to pull the top end off of the engine. Here I ran into the problem of weak phillips head screws mated to aluminum for 35 years. Which meant a few stripped heads. Another one that's my fault because I didn't have an impact driver handy for these situations. Anyway, no pictures this time.

Parts!!

2009-04-23T21:26:00.000-07:00

I've already gotten several parts in the mail but today I got down to the nuts and bolts. I highly recommend ordering from the Bolt Depot. You can buy any quantity from them and they arrive separated and labeled with a checked off purchase order. Shipping was quick and reasonable. And finally, their selection is as complete as any one source could have. I also strongly recommend you support your local small hardware store by buying nuts and bolts from them. Take it from me as who worked his way through college at old school hardware stores, that store makes a good portion of its income from these sales. However, I needed some oddballs for this project and it would be a lot easier for me to buy most all at once. I'm sure I didn't get enough though, so I'll be hitting up the shops soon enough.

Now to figure out what goes where. When I made the shopping list I failed to also make note of what went where. Mistakes were made.

Day Three: To Great Lengths

2009-04-20T13:45:00.000-07:00

Another long day of working on the bike. This time during the first hot day out here. Never minding the heat, everything that I thought couldn't go wrong, did.

My goal was to finish the frame tear down which meant taking the engine out. I'd waited to drain the oil until now as I didn't really see a reason to. Out comes the 19mm socket and the socket handle (not a ratchet!). No turning, not even a bit. I'm turning the right (as in 'left') direction. I brace myself and the bike and heave to. Still nothing. Out comes the rubber mallet and I start banging, harder and harder I go. Not a budge. I even make a little mark on the plug as reference. Time for the hot wrench. One propane torch and judicious amount of flame later I return to the wrench and mallet...nothing. I even took a claw hammer to the wrench. So there the plug sits. I have no impact wrench either. I imagined it would be tight after 22+ years of steel screwed into aluminum. However, this is just insane. Clearly the previous owner felt there was some risk of the plug parting ways with the bike and so he took to great pains to prevent this.

Giving up on the oil (although a large amount did managed to leak from the left crank cover) I decided to just pull the engine. My intention was to strip the engine down to the barrels to make it lighter and smaller for extraction. I removed the top mounting brackets and the eight cap nuts that held the rocker box cover in place. And then tried to pull the little cover off. Here's the thing; the cover has flange in the center that hits the frame when you try and lift it "up." You can't get it high enough to clear the cylinder studs, so it stays there. Unless you extract the studs which I started to do but decided wasn't the best idea. So the engine had to come out as one massive and heavy piece. I jack the engine up a bit, remove the last mounting bolts, go to the right side as stated in the shop manual and once again heave to. Stuck, stuck, stuck...I twist and turn, tilt for and aft and cant the thing in all directions. Going one way the studs and mounting flange are causing the issue, going another and it's stuck in the rear frame bracket. It seemed like two hours in that heat and may well have been. Finally and in some manner that I could not replicate if I tried, that engine came out. I started to make a stand for it but gave up on trying to lift it again that day. So I pulled the forks and steering stem and left it at that. I drank 64oz of Lemon-Lime Gatorade that day and sweated every last drop out. My forearms were scratched and sore from lifting the engine (Grasshopper style, if you know what I mean).

Only that wasn't all there was; To make matters so excruciatingly worse that I still cannot fathom it I discovered a cracked frame tube. Not just a little crack but one that goes all the way through. It sits below where the passenger peg bracket is welded on. I could not have seen it until I took the bracket off and took enough weight off the bike to allow it to flex while sitting on its center stand. I haven't yet decided if I will attempt to weld it (torch) or I will have someone else (hopefully MIG). I could take no more so I dutifully cleaned up and snapped this picture:

Delays

2009-04-18T17:04:00.001-07:00

I promise I'll put a real post up here soon. I haven't really done any work on the bike anyway. It's a period of reconnoitering and reflection. Lists are being made, bits are being cleaned and inspected and some parts are being ordered (which will make great posts in themselves). So bear with me as I believe I'll pull the engine tomorrow which will allow me to tear down the rest of the bike as well. I have an idea for a simple engine stand to make my life easy.

Stay Tuned!

PS. This evening I finally ordered a Barbour International Jacket. I almost bought one twice before; once while living in Dublin and the other on a trip to London. Being a college student on a budget I couldn't rationalize the expense. I still can't, considering the thing cost more than this motorcycle, but I saw it online and it called to me. Hopefully it will arrive here soon.

Direction

2009-04-14T21:29:00.000-07:00

Direction, I have none. I only know vaguely what I want this bike to look like. I'm merely working around a simple concept: Make a bike that I would want to ride and that is rideable.

That last bit is a nice little concept that has several meanings. Firstly it means that the bike needs to work and work well, including having a performance level that makes it cafe worthy. It also means that it needs to be somewhat practicable. Meaning no full race cams or racing slicks. Turn signals are a go because it will be ridden in the city. I mean no offense to SF Bay area residents but here the turn signal is the most misused and misunderstood feature of any vehicle. I am going to signal and hope that my actions will help stave off stupidity on some other person's part (not that I'm betting on it).

It also needs to be comfortable. I'm 6'2" and broad shouldered and this is not a nice big Bonnie. I was going to go with clip-ons (racing handlebars that 'clip on' to the front forks) but these will likely sit too low for me to bend over and ride any distance. So I ordered up a set of clubman bars today (a racing bar that mounts like other handlebars but are bent down and swept back for a more comfortable racing posture). I'm using a headlight bracket that will let me add clipons laster should I chose to.

Shopping for parts is fun.

Day Two: Getting Closer to Nothing

2009-04-12T12:17:00.000-07:00

The Saturday before Easter in Oakland, CA; a beautiful day to work on a motorcycle. It was a beautiful day to ride a motorcycle as well which encouraged me to work a bit harder.

I ran through the bike like a whirlwind. 5 hours of solid work and I managed to take the bike down to essentially a rolling chassis with engine. I could have torn the whole thing down in one long day. I stopped at the engine because if I started I wouldn't quit (never start on an engine unless you intend to finish it) and because I had plans later that evening. I also realized that I hadn't gotten around to planning what I'd do with the engine when I had it off. So I cleaned up and called it quits.

This is what I was left with:

My big pile of discards. Other than the front fender tucked in there I won't be using any of these. This represents a massive amount of lost weight and/or improvements.

A fine pile of nuts and bolts. None will be reused. Either the part they held has been discarded or they will be replaced with stainless.

Day One: The Tear Down Begins

2009-04-11T22:13:00.000-07:00

I'll tell you right now, these posts are not going to be as timely as I'd like. A full day of work followed by an evening of bike work does not necessarily begat a late night blog post. But, I'll do my best. On to the bike...

My first evening of work on the bike was mostly familiarizing myself with it and some light teardown. I've never worked on a CB350 before so I had no idea what I'd find. From what I'd gathered when I bought the bike it had been own by a high school kid. It looks like it had been ridden hard and laid down gently on either side. After the owner moved away it had sat in a florist's storage area since 1987. What I got 22 years later was a bike in decent shape considering time and neglect. The tank is severly dented, perhaps beyond repair. The shift lever was broken and poorly welded. The brake lever was (other side of bike remember) was bent and scraped severly. Both foot pegs were also filed well down on the ends. The engine, frame, etc have a nice coating of grease and dirt which tranfer nicely to my hands. Most of the chrom is pitted and rusty which will leave me with decisions on polishing/painting/replacement. Comparing it to the bikes it was intended to compete with, Triumphs, etc., I'd say the bike is not as well put together. It is a more modern design and therein is the source of the reliability that Honda was so famous for. The engine case is horizontaly split which lessens the chance of oil leaks. It's over sqaure (short stroke, what have you) for fast revs (if that's your thing). The wiring is sort of a nightmare but I'm really not used to turn signals.

I got as far as removing some of the electrical and the big bits. End of Day One:

The Beginning (always the best place to start)

2009-04-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

Motorcycles...you know you love them. We all do. Steve McQueen did, and who doesn't want to be Steve McQueen? Well, before he died. I'm sure most of the women reading this don't want to be him either. We are getting far from the point.

The cafe system and the Rocker culture that grew up around them is well documented. In a later post I might expound upon it for my friends not so familiar with it. While almost any bike can be turned into a cafe racer I was going to be very budget conscious here. Hondas are ideal in this situation as parts are readily available for almost all models despite the era. I poured over Craig's List looking for just the right bike. After two months of looking I found what I was looking for; a 1972 Honda CB350 twin. More of these bikes have been sold than any other single model of bike, surpassing 300,000 in only 6 years of production. This makes used parts incredibly cheap and easy to find on eBay. Oddly, the bikes are a little less common here in the San Francisco area. I had to travel 150 miles North to pick up mine. An adventure in itself.

And so I give you The Bike (complete with the atrocious Bud seat):