1/5/12 Culling the Herd

In order to focus my attention a bit, I've sold the CB700sc. I had the bike listed for a few weeks, and finally someone followed through and actually saw the bike. We haggled a bit, a deposit was put down and the new owner will be picking it up some time next week. It'll be nice to have it gone, honestly. I was starting to feel bad about ignoring it in the corner of the shop, and it's always nice to have a little cash to throw at the Z. 

I also had the CB650 listed, but I've recently decided to keep it. A.D., much to the chagrin of her mother, has decided to get her motorcycle licence. As a result, we may be building the 650 up for her. This gives me a much needed excuse to keep it. 

I'm still buttoning up odds and ends on the SV, as well as waiting on my new front fender. I spent fair amount of time trying to tuck the bulk of wiring that used to be in the fairing into the frame. I finally got it set so that it isn't a huge pain to get the airbox to seat properly. It looks like I'm gonna have to run the speedometer pickup to the rear wheel, as there is no way to make it look good on the front. This means extending the wires and making a mount for the pickup. I'll try to take care of that this weekend. The front end is looking good though.

I also painted my front crossmember with POR-15 finally. I love this stuff. It looks good and is incredibly tough. If there were a need to have this car sandblasted I would do the whole chassis with it. 

-W.W. SBSS

12/15/11 Overdue Update (again)

I know it has been a while, but the holiday season is tough. I've been to 5 parties, including santacon shown below, in about as many days, and it doesn't look like the pace will be slowing down until after new years. #firstworldpains  In any case, here's whats been going on.

A very nice member on the HybridZ forums decided to clean house. Instead of selling his extra stuff, he gave it away to whoever could pick it up. Since I live only an hour or so away, I went and got myself some free toys, namely a shopping cart full of Datsun transmissions

And a corroded and 2/3 complete set of triple Solex carburetors. Since the triples aren't complete, I'll probably end up selling them since I plan to do an engine swap eventually anyway. I'll likely keep at least one transmission as a spare and sell the other. Not a bad haul for an afternoon's drive.

The other day I was walking in midtown and saw this very interesting Ducati. It was a 999, which usually looks something like this.

But this one had been stripped down way beyond what even most streetfighter conversions remove. Check out the tail section. Not only is the seat gone, but the tail fairing as well. Just exposed tubing there. Also the wrapped exhaust is sweet. It's not often you see something this...different.

I've been plugging away at getting my frame rails installed. As I said, it involves a bunch of hammering to get them to fit flush. I also needed to use a wire wheel on an angle grinder to grind away the undercoating on the car. This is dirty work.

I finally have them fitting the way I like, so now it's time to paint the inside of the framerails with POR-15. I prepped them last night with the etching solution, which allows the paint to stick well to the smooth new metal. Paint will go on tonight.

I also finally got ahold of the UV-proof clearcoat I needed for my tank. This is gonna look awesome on my bike.

Finally, I pretty much have the CB700SC back together. I may register it so I can ride it around until the SV is back on the road, but eventually I'm gonna sell it. The only thing holding me back right now is I'm missing a stupid little 'T' fitting for the fuel system. I misplaced it at some point and it's always the little things that hold you back.

-W.W. SBSS

9/14/11 Overdue Update

It has been entirely too long since I have updated my blog. I'd like to apologize to both of my followers (Hi mom!) for being away for so long.

That isn't to say that I haven't been in and around my shop lately. Last week I picked up another motorcycle. I may have an addiction. I found this clean 1979 Honda CB650 on craigslist. It is much better suited to the cafe racer treatment than the 1984 CB700SC I last purchased, so I jumped at the opportunity.

This also means that I am simply going to get the CB700 running well and sell it sooner than later. To this end, last night I cleaned and rebuilt the carbs.

Over the weekend, I went to the NYZCC (New York Z Car Club) BBQ. As always, seeing the Z guys and watching the finished, running cars lit a fire under me. There were some very interesting cars in attendance.

 In addition to the usual crowd, the first production Z ever sold to the public, VIN# 13, stopped by to say hello.

Also, this CRAZY little Datsun Roadster, showed up with no hood. This thing was SR20det powered, and put down 387hp at the wheels without the installed nitrous! This in a car that originally weighed 1984lbs and had 96hp from the factory. The owner said he could spin the wheels in 4th, and that when he dyno tested the car, it twisted the car enough to crack the paint below the rear edge of the door, which you can see in the picture. All this on stock brakes and 225 tires, scary!

I have also decided I need to make room for the cars in my future. I can't stick with my current rusty Z chassis, so I am pulling the last bits out of it in the next week or so, and getting rid of the chassis. This coming weekend I will be looking at a possible new chassis to work on. It belongs to the father of a friend, so I should be able to get a good deal on it. Here's hoping it's in good shape!

Also, I am going to sell my other Z. I bought this 77 280z 2+2 about 4 years ago. It is a pretty damn nice car...except for the fact that the chassis is so rusty that part of the frame moves when you brake. This will make an AWESOME parts car for someone, but I really have no need for it, and there is no chance that I'm actually going to get to fixing the rust on this one, since its worse than my 72.

This should free up some funds and space to dedicate to my new Z and the inevitable parts car that I pull the engine out of for it.


In other news, last night I also installed what's known as a 'Z tube' in my G35. The 350Z and G have the same engine but, as the G is a luxury car, it is expected to be much quieter. One change the engineers at nissan made was to fit an intake tube to attenuate some of the natural engine sounds. Some engineer probably spent months working on the shape of this tube, getting it to fit in the tight engine bay, as well as dampen the intake noises correctly, only for the entire sport oriented G community to go out and replace it with a simple tube.

Here are a couple comparison videos, the change is a little hard to pick up on the video, but there is more 'burble' now. Cheap and sweet little modification.

-W.W. SBSS

8/8/11 Assemble to Disassemble

The natural process of building a car or motorcycle is this:

First you gather the parts you need to put the bike together. Then you loosely assemble it to make sure everything fits the way you want it to. Then, once you have an idea what it's going to look like, you strip it all down again. Once it's all apart, you clean everything and get it ready for paint. Then, finally, you assemble everything for the last time.

To that end, I roughed in the front end of the bike.

Then I decided I liked where it was going and started pulling it apart again.

It's amazing how small a bike looks when you start removing parts.

Also, you'll notice that the headlight is now tinted yellow. I got a little tint happy and also gave the SV an asymmetrical look.

Before I left for the day, I also built the other half of my gantry for the engine hoist. I am starting to run low on steel, so this side has a slightly different design, but it should be plenty strong enough.

-W.W. SBSS

8/2/11Project Cafe Part 2

After picking up the CB700, I spent the next week or so ordering parts online to turn this boxy, 80's bike into the 60's style cafe racer of my dreams.

The first thing on the list is to get rid of the headlight and fairing. To this end I ordered a pretty standard, 7" round headlight.

Which arrived a week or so later from China in some interesting packaging.

In order to mount this on the bike, I ordered some old school looking aluminum headlight mounts.

And the clubman bars I mentioned earlier arrived, so I started pulling the front end of the bike apart.

First, I lowered the forks in the triple trees to bring the front end of the bike down a bit for a more aggressive stance.

Then I slipped the mounts on and temporarily bolted up the headlight and mocked up the handlebars. Much better!

Stay tuned for the first ride, then disassembly for cleaning and painting!

-W.W. SBSS

Project Cafe: Part 1

I have wanted to build a Cafe Racer for the longest time. For the uninitiated, a Cafe Racer is a type of 60's British sport bike. Back in these days, guys used to strip their bikes down and race from cafe to a predetermined point and back to the cafe, attempting to make this trip before a single song was over on the jukebox. They were always attempting to 'do the ton' or go 'ton up' which meant go over 100mph, quite a feat in the 60's. Cafe racers were the original badass british bikers.

New cafe-style bikes are meant to look like the old Triumphs, BSAs and Nortons, but with relatively modern, more powerful and much more reliable Japanese underpinnings.

To this end, I am building my own Cafe. The ideal bike to start with is a 70's Honda CB750, but these are commanding a little more money than I am willing to spend right now. I did find an 1985 Honda CB700. It is a little different, but much more modern. 

Here is the bike as it stood when I picked it up. It looked good, ran reasonably well so I loaded it up in the truck.

Then I brought it to the shop.

I have already ordered some clubman bars to bring the riding position back down to something a bit more sporty.

Next on the list is getting rid of that very 80's square headlight, and making a sporty single seat.

There is also now a ninja 600 getting some maintenance in the shop, but more on that later....

W.W. SBSS