New member here to this forum - it was recommended by one of the members of CB1100F.net, which I'm very active with. I thought I'd share with you all the restoration of my '82 750F, since that seems to be the main reason for this forum. Back in October of 2009, I was looking for my next project bike and found this on CL for $400:
The bike had been repainted at some point and aftermarket decals were used. Since I knew absolutely nothing about these bikes back then, it looked normal to me. Boy, did I have a lot to learn.
The history of the bike was pretty typical. The present owner had purchased it with restoration in mind, but proceeded to do absolutely nothing with it. It sounded like the owner before him had the same problem. It had no title, but he gave me a few names of "possible" previous owners. After making several calls, I ended up talking to the original owner who bought it new in Rhode Island. He still had the bill of sale from the dealership, which he soon mailed to me. (Very cool!) It turned out that he was the only person to ever register the bike. Eventually he sold it to a friend for parts, although it looks like the next guy didn't take much off of it. He confirmed to me that at some point he repainted the bike but didn't say why. After some work with the RI RMV, I was able to secure a copy of the last registration, and together with a bill of sale from the RI owner, I got a title from MA. Major hurdle resolved!
Before I was going to spend any money on this bike, I wanted to know if it still ran. I pulled the carbs and gave them a thorough cleaning since they were a mess and had old gas in them. Then they were reinstalled along with a donor battery, and using a aux. fuel tank, I turned it over. Within a few seconds of cranking, she fired up, smoked a little, then smoothed out and ran decent. Another hurdle resolved, so now I could move onto disassembly.
Here's a shot of the motor out of the bike. Note the hole in the alternator cover:
When I got the bike, this hole was covered with duct tape.
This is the bike that caused me to become a powder coater. A friend at work who watched me restore my CB360T suggested that instead of paying someone else to PC the parts for this bike, make the investment and do it myself. He even paid for half of my first gun with the agreement that I'd PC a number of parts on his Ducati and then we'd be even. That suggestion was a ground breaker for me. Three years and thousands of parts later, I'm restoring parts for guys all over the country. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:
One thing that was pretty bizarre with this bike were the calipers. Look closely at this next picture and see if you notice anything strange about the front right caliper:
I'll end this for now and wait to see who's the first to identify the caliper oddity. Much more to come...
2001 Kawasaki Vulcan 1500 Classic
1983 CB1100F
1982 CB900F
1982 CB750F (under restoratio)
1977 GL1000
1974 CB750 Four
www.tomscyclerecycling.com
Locked
Welcome to the forum.
Enjoy
There is a bolt in the cylinder where the piston is. Now what did I win?
Ya gotta love duct tape on a bike! You better get the caliper mounted or it'll never do you any good. Is there anything there to mount it to? What are the two rusty bits on the body outside where the pistons are housed. They're not bolts through the caliper body,are they???
