The CB200 at the Beach

Here's the finished project, which gets ridden as often as possible.

Wanna read about our next project? Check out dorsettbelmont.blogspot.com

Only a few people have CB's

Here's the bike with the new seat. It was made to fit the stock pan so it is a 30 second swap back to the 2-up seat and it offers a decent amount of padding. With the pan and powder coating, foam and upholstery I'm in it just under $200 and the bike is starting to look like a little cafe racer.

We are still considering paint. The old school gold is getting cooler by the day. I have an extra tank and side covers that could go red or even flat black. Right now I have a set of rims with new spokes and newly polished hubs that are out being powder coated red. We are going to put those on and then decide where to go with color.

In the mean time Scooters been riding all over town and when we are out riding together he gets a lot more attention then me. He told me "Dad everyone has a chopper, only a few people have CB's"

The New Seat

Its hard to believe we've had Christmas (December), the Super Bowl (January), Valentines Day (February), Final Four (March) and Spring Break (April) since my last post. But... the seat is done. The first rusty pan was too far gone. When the edges are gone there is no way to attach the upholstery trim. So it was back to Ebay.

I had to wait a few months but another seat finally turned up. This one had less rust and was only $20, so we went again. When the seat & pan came in I stripped it down to inspect it. This one had one rust through spot but was salvageable.

We considered a bunch of options. One weekend I messed around with some scrap sheet metal to make a cowl but I wasn't happy with the boat tail look. I've seen guys who will weld the back end of a tank on as a seat cowl, but I didn't want to cut up my spare CB tank and wasn't in the mood to spend $$$ to experiment. Then one day my Ebay spider found this... a CB200 cover and foam:
I liked the look of the uphosltered speed bump and the fact that it was shaped to follow the front lip of the pan to meet up with the tank. So I sent my $97+40. And waited a month for it to arrive from Vietnam.

While I waited I had the pan powder coated and I sanded and spray painted the seat trim. The pan was stripped and powder coated by a friend and it looks great! I reattached the rubber and latches and we were ready to build a seat.

"New" Seat Pan on the Way

Another rusty seat pan, really? Yep. I bought another rusty seat pan off of e-bay. The last one was a cb175 pan that the seller said was a cb200 it was in such bad shape the seller refunded the $10 I paid for it (but not the shipping.) So I have a cb175 throwaway pan.

So another one came up on e-bay. This time I asked the seller to post a photo of the pan. It was rusty and has a rusted hole in it. Because I'm the only idiot who will buy crap like this I was the only bidder .99 + $14 shipping. So we are waiting for this rust bucket to arrive.

If its unusable its $15 for latches, hinges, bumpstops etc. But to make the seat I want I figure were going to do some welding so the rusted out part(s) should be repairable.

Here's a cool seat idea from the $50 mod thread on http://dotheton.com. I like the simplicity of the seat and I'm thinking I'm going to mock one of these up on my "new" pan.

The Rear Fender

This weekend, we put the bike up on the lift and decided to mock up the rear fender supports. The goal was to use a bone stock fender and rotate it around the tire and to mount it on the swing arm and then to make struts shaped like 7's that attach to the fender at the stock location.

When we pulled the shocks to check the travel it became apparent that the stock brackets welded to the fender are too wide and will run into the frame. So back to ebay... now I've got a "new" (rusty) rear fender coming that we will cut off the brackets and make some straight struts, then re-chrome the whole thing.

Here's a shot with the fender mocked-up and a photoshop seat like the silver one I saw on ebay.

Wish List

With Christmas coming on fast I've been digging around to see what kind of trouble I can get into. Heres a couple of possibilities:

SantaClara Honda has this little beauty that might give us a little hotter spark.

"So, I have done a little research and come up with a system that will work with almost any conventional system. The only limitation is that the coil you use must have 3 ohms or greater resistance. All the old Hondas I've checked meet this requirement. The system also includes a built in red LED that indicates when the points opens which makes accurate static timing a breeze. Currently I'm testing the system on a 1974 Honda CB200 and it is working perfectly. We plan on offering these for sale on our website after we have tested it long enough to establish confidence. The expected price will be around $35 each." read more here

How about the seat project? Straight off the boat from Thailand a custom Cafe seat for a CB175. (It will not fit on the Cb200 but its the right approach.) Steel pan and body powdercoated to match the tank and rims? Hummm...

Dear Santa: I've been a fairly good boy...

Yep

Pulled the left carb and cleaned everything. Pulled the petcock and it had rust in it again! So we pulled the tank emptied the gas into a clear container. The rust floating in the gas helped us determine that our tank had let go a few additional treasures. So we flushed the tank with water again and dried everything out. Then I ran down to the gas station to buy a gallon of clean gas.

After putting everything back together and resetting the carbs to the stock 1-1/4 turns on the air/fuel setting (the small screw on the lower left of the carb) and the throttle screw to 2-1/2. She fired right up and I rode it down to the gas station for a fill-up. I left the gas station and made a bonzai run down the main road hitting 65 with crisp throttle response all the way through the power band came up to the stop light and she idled at about 2K. I think we have a winner. I still have a little wobble in the front-end so I might just send it over to Sam's Cycle shop to have them true the front wheel.