Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Saturday Aug. 8th 2011 log from Westondc:
(Lincoln NE --> Okoboji IA) 300 miles

Our Nebraska riders left Lincoln at 8am for a foggy ride 50 miles to Bellevue where we met Zac (Grasscutter) on our way North to Okoboji IA. The other riders along with us were Joel (ImPaler) on his 1976 CB750, Eric (Deceptibong) and his girlfriend Princess riding on the back of Erics 1972 CB750.





As we crossed the Missouri river into Iowa we were impressed to see the massive flooding along its banks. Once in Iowa we skipped the Interstate and headed along HWY 92 toward Treynor IA. I was leading the pack at the time when I noticed Zac disappear in my mirror. The group turned around to see if there was a problem. Zac slowly came into view on the side of the road pointing to the front brake caliper on his 1982 CB650 which was dangling to the side. The mounting bolts had worked their way out and dropped somewhere along the highway.




Now we were stuck in Treynor, less than two hours into our 250 mile trip to Okoboji. Of course all the hardware stores in the small town were closed. After some deliberation we decided to bungee the caliper to the bike and backtrack to Council Bluffs IA in search of some metric blots. Low and behold AutoZone had just what we needed and we were back on our way ina short time with our fingers crossed.

The ride up HWY 71 through Iowa was a straight shot with the same corn covered rolling hills passing us mile by mile. We stuck to 80 mile runs between fillips and met some nice locals at each stop who told us about the old Hondas they used to ride. Our Nebraska crew logged 300 miles when we reached Okoboji without any other issues along the way. The weather was great and the view of Lake Okoboji was a nice change from the scenery of our recent 6 hour ride. Princess snapped a few pictures of us before we went in search of a campsite.





We setup camp at the West side of the lake and unloaded our gear. I remembered seeing a small Mexican restaurant in town and it didn’t take much convincing before we were all on our way there for margaritas!

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After finishing dinner and our delicious drinks we walked to our bikes where we met a nice fellow and his wife standing by them. He introduced himself as “Wild Mad” Steve Milton of Milton Cycle. He walked us to his yellow 70’s van were two SL350 race bikes were sitting inside. We all talked about our passion for vintage bikes and swapped some stories. We told him we were in town for a relay and he asked,” is it the SOHC4 relay I read about in Motorcycle Classics? I had no idea you guys would be coming through here.” So we swapped some our numbers and agreed to meet the next day for the SOHC4 hand off in town with the Minnesota riders.

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Sunday Aug. 9th 2011 log from Westondc:
(Okoboji IA --> Lincoln NE) 250miles


The next morning after breakfast we met "Wild Man" on his 1971 Cb750 along with some of his friends.

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They lead us on a nice ride to the beach were we passed some time as Vance and the fellow riders from Minnesota made their way to Okoboji. After about an hour we walked to our bikes and I noticed a few guys pull up on motorcycles. One was riding a 1970’s CB750 so I told him and his friends about the SOHC4 relay and asked them if they wanted to join us for pictures. Well, they did and our crew of SOHC4 riders grew a little bigger. The group of us pulled up to the Okoboji meeting spot not long before Vance, Accolay, Cbrrudy and NateMinn pulled into town from Minnesota. There ended up being about thirteen of us hanging out and looking over each other’s bikes. Some people from around the area walked up to see what all the commotion was about. They asked, “Is there a bike show today?” No not really, just some Honda lovers passing around a plastic Godzilla, ha-ha.

[img width=600 height=450]http://i774.photobucket.com/albums/yy25/westondc/100_2944.jpg[/img]

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It was great meeting everyone there and we all had a great time. Unfortunately we had to make it short and sweet in order to get back to Lincoln NE at a decent time. Accolay, who had rode from Minneapolis, decided to ride along with us to Lincoln Nebraska. So we received the relay handoff, said our goodbyes and strapped in Godzilla for the ride. We had a nice ride back to Lincoln with no problems and even beat the rain by about 15 minutes.

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[b]More updates and pictures to follow…[/b]

Thursday, August 4, 2011



It's been a long time since we've updated the blog.... but we're about to get some new ride and project posts up soon! This weekend Eastern and Western are leaving Lincoln with a group of friends for the SOHC4 relay handoff at Okoboji IA. Check back soon.


Thursday, March 10, 2011

Update: CB750 resurrection and continued progress on the little red monster.


The CB750 got a badly needed make over. It may be hard to tell from the photos but we did quite a bit of work. Some of this work included, new rear tire, new O ring chain, installed stock intake, new battery/battery box, new handlebars, repaired some wiring issues, synced the carbs, and scrubbed the engine as best as I could to clear out the gunk inside the fins. All this work should make the bike run better, smoother, and (hopefully) faster!




The CA160, on the other hand, is still a work in progress. We still haven't dug too deep into the motor, however it did run pretty well last fall. The current focus is still removing as many polish-able parts as I can. We are getting down to the last few pieces that don't include the engine and I'm getting excited to see what it will look like when it's back together. She looks to be in sad shape at the moment but it will make a world of difference once she's all reassembled.




Sunday, February 13, 2011

Winter Projects...

I used the time spent indoors this winter to clean and polish a few different parts for both the CB750 and the CA160. For the 750, I spent some time on a stock air box that would replace the individual air "pods" that are currently installed. Switching back to stock air should require me to "rejet" the carburetors. Upon removing the carbs and pulling off the bowl it appears to have jets marked with "120". DA didn't think we needed to rejet but we would see how the bike ran. The airbox took plenty of cleaning and the rubber boots that connect it to the carbs maybe to too hard to use and ultimately needs replacing. Here is a photo of the airbox. A boring addition to the blog indeed!

I also worked on an old rusty battery box that I had laying around. This box was hardly in "good" shape when I started but the previous owner of my bike did a pretty idiotic thing by cutting the old one in half in order to get a larger battery under the seat.


Here is a photo of the old battery box. pretty lame...

The new battery box was in pretty poor shape when I started but once it was sand blasted, primed and painted, it looked pretty good considering how bad it was and how long it rolled around in the back seat of my car.

I also did quite a bit of work for the CA160 too. I spent some time and removed a couple of parts that were made from solid aluminum. I removed the front wheel and completely took the break drum and the spokes out of the rim. The original rim was too rusted to use but I still had that blue CA90 that had good rims. So with a little musical motorcycle parts I came away with a complete wheel that looked really nice. Unfortunately the break drum wasn't going to shine itself, so I spent many hours wet sanding and finally polishing the parts. Included with the wheel I also wet sanded and polished the handlebar mounting bracket and the speedo mechanism. I think they both came out looking really nice and I plan on removing the rear wheel and some other flair and doing the same thing. Its slow work but I find it relaxing and rewarding.



Very shiny now. Better than chrome because you can always re polish it...