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...