My CB550

Here is my own personal street machine. I bought this about a month ago. Here is what it looked like when I first got it. I am currently doing some modifications. Check back, and ill keep you posted on what I have going on. I know you love the after market front faring, and the nice back rest.

I finally had a little time to work on my CB550 this weekend. As you can see, I stripped off the front fairing, the crash bar, the back rest, the rear pegs, and other misc. parts that I deemed useless. I also added a set of clubman handle bars, and a nice H4 tri-bar headlight (see the main page for more info about these items). The clubman bars were a little bit of a struggle to make fit. I ended up having to disconnect and relocate the brake line (which entitles bleeding the brake), and also tearing apart the twist throttle so that I could relocate the cables to prevent the throttle from sticking open. To be honest, it was a real pain in the rear doing all of this relocation, but it sure looks flossy. You be the judge.

UPDATE

Here you can see the deleted rear fender and light bracket. I built a little set of mounts to relocate the tail light as well as the license plate. This angle also gives you a good look at those new avon tires.

This shows the look of the bike as a whole. I also replace the fork seals and fork oil, washed and waxed the painted surfaces, polished all the aluminum and chrome, put on the new tires, and re-routed some of the wiring.

Here is another good shot of my bike form more of a front view. Finally got the signals put back on and working properly, as well as replaced the old speedo cable with a new one from motion pro.

This picture again shows how I cleaned up the tail end of my bike. I really wanted it to look clean with cafe racer styling, but at the same time preserve the stock look of the bike. If you have questions or comments send them over. For more cafe racer goods click here.

18/19/08 UPDATE

Had a little more time to work on the HONAHA cafe racer, and added a nice 4 into 1 exhaust, jetted up the carbs a size, and cleaned it more. I found the exhaust on craigslist for 20 bucks. It had a fair amount of surface rust, and a little bit of road rash. To solve these problems, and still fit it in my budget, I used some fairly abrasive metal polish on a scotch brite pad to brush off all the rust, and grime. The header looks like really nice now, like a brushed aluminum rather then chrome. I then added a 5 dollar exhaust tip from Schucks, and am running it straight. This straight pipe sounds mean, just enough for everyone to hear, but not enough to annoy innocent bystanders. Here are some new pics, I think it improved the overall look of the bike. Tell me what you think.