Another ‘80 - The Bitsa Bike

[NobleHops]

Cool, our swingarm shock bushings arrived from David Silver Spares.



Taping up the fresh paint while we futz with this in the press.





This giant nut made the sacrifice to be the optimum pusher.



SMUUUUUUUSH!



...and done.



Now it's ready to be installed in our frame.

[NobleHops]

Props to my friend Dave McMunn for a lot of guidance on this swingarm project. He pointed me in this direction with my black '80, and its a nice modification.



First we just need to remove the powdercoat from both swingarm frame bosses, just a few careful flat swipes with a file and those are good to go. Then the right-side boss needs just a skosh of material removed, it was about a half a millimeter on this frame for a nice snug fit, needing just a few love taps with a soft mallet to get it in place.



Nevemind my greasy handprints, this is good to go, snug, silky action, and it has zero play now that it is torqued up. Awesome.



One note: I got freaky with this one, and had my machinist pal elongate the chain adjustment slot forward one inch, and we replaced the threaded rod on the chain adjusters elongating them too. I wanted the option of preserving the stock wheelbase (although that will require a chain swap) as the 1100F swingarm does elongate it 1 inch over stock. When I did it on my black bike with a stock rear wheel, that resulted in the tire chafing the end of the inner fender, so mine is slightly bobbed on that bike. It's not an issue with the 17-inch 1100F wheel I'm using, but as prior, I just wanted to option to use the bike either way.



Assembled the steering head with new bearings, installed the triple clamp and the fork...



Cool preload-adjustable fork caps, to replace the air-adjustable Prolink caps I wasn't going to use anyway.



HEY, IT'S UPRIGHT, WOOOO!

[NobleHops]

NIce sight.

OK, time to start installing more stuff on it while it’s easy, starting with this battery box.



Chasing out a little stray powdercoat, just making certain assembly is easy.



These thread restorer taps are great, they don't remove any material, they just push the metal back where it belongs.



Battery box in.



Getting this headlight bracket organized.



Fuse block, good look at the preload-adjustable caps.

[NobleHops]

OK, more unicorn tears, these came all the way from South Africa.

These are "sport" footrest plates that would be found on the European 80-82 bikes, including the 16mm pivot for the swingarm (79s are 14mm). I simply bored a set of 79 sport kit plates for my black bike, but this is a little slicker. Now to clean them up.





Peeling off the stickers...



Vapor blasted and ready to send out for polish. Was supposed to be sisal polish, kind-of a 3/4 finish .

[NobleHops]

OK, with the battery box in plus the ignitors and R/R installed below, now is the time to install the rear fenders.



Ewww. These are actually in B+ shape beneath the grime and oxidized plastic, we can fix this.



Fast forward 45 minutes and this was scoured and wet-sanded with red and then grey Scotchbrite to remove the outer layer of oxidized plastic and prepare it for paint.



We took a different approach with this one - the shinier plastic was scuffy, and so with no good way to restore the shine, we nuked it all together with a light dry blast to prepare it for paint.





...and then we painted it.

[NobleHops]

Getting ready to move ahead with the rear end...



...so we finished up some odds and ends with the rear wheel and the sprocket and cush drive.



Rear wheel and brake torque arm are in along with the rear caliper bracket and the excellent Ikon rear shocks. Wrong hose guide on the centerstand, D'OH! That's a Prolink part.



Nice '80 chrome rear rack, from (Washington) Mike, with the two-bumper setup needed to properly support the tail. Thanks Mike!



Oh hi there! It's a roller

[NobleHops]

I am embarrassed to admit that I held onto this incredible gift from my friend Tony Herd for about 10 years, waiting for the perfect project to use it on. Tony, the moment has come at last!



This contains some upgraded spark units, plus some improved wiring that incorporates a coil power relay, sending the full charging voltage up to the coils directly, bypassing the circuitous journey a stock bike sends it on. Awesome.



Yup, I've hoaded it THIS long.





Continuing on the rear of the bike, this license plate/tail light bracket is bent up as they all are, and so it got bolted up before coating to be massaged back onto shape. A little bend here and a little bonk there and this thing looked square and straight again, so I took it back off and powdercoated it, good to go. My friend Terry had that nice trunk I needed, thanks Terry!



Now Tony's ignitor setup is installed below and the main wiring harness is roughly in place. Rear fenders are on. This is a repro wiring harness, and we've had good luck with those, but this one is a little different, we'll see how it goes. We'll figure it out. The footrest plates are back, and my usually excellent polisher spaced that they were supposed to be sisal finish, D'OH! They'll mellow in time - I can't bring myself to dull them down.



Starting to look pretty squared-away back here!



Conditioning the plastic on this taillight and cleaning up the wiring before we install it with a new lens.



Tackle boxes of new and used CBX fasteners. Could not do this project without these!

[NobleHops]

It's getting to be time to get into a gauge project.



These are those nice Prolink gauges. My friend Bob Franzke gave me a black lens that I need to replace the air pressure warning lens, and now we need to disassemble these and clean them and lubricate them carefully where we should, and replace the gauge cushions.



We also need to swap out the warning light tub and the wiring harness, luckily I hoarded a bunch of junky guages for just this sort of need. I can swap that white plastic tub and install a twin-shock wiring harness and these will look and work as good as new, and look correct in pretty much all respects for an '80



These are all twin-shock gauge wiring harnesses, fresh from the ultrasonic. I might be a hoarder.

[NobleHops]

But before that, we have kind-of a big brake project to do. I've hoar^^^COLLECTED several sets of the twin-pot brakes from the CB-F and VF bikes of the era, as with a little mixing and matching of components, this stuff bolts up to the CBX wheels, and it's a gigantic improvement in power and feel over the junky single pot brakes the twin-shock bikes came with.



My project is made easy in part because I have an entire CB1100F rear end on the bike, so those parts bolt up with zero fiddling. Same with the fork - the 1100F rotors are what we're using and so I just hunted up a set of the 900F/1100F brackets and picked through the best of the calipers I had.



These are my donors, before refinishing and rebuilding. If I wasn't being anal and making everything super spiffy I could have bolted these up, these are in great shape as is. But we're going to make them perfect.



Cleaned and vapor blasted - I was momentarily tempted to use these as you see them, but chickened out. I have a mismatched left bracket here, caught that later.





Masked and powdercoated in a lovely 30% gloss, here they are hot and fresh from the oven.



Master cylinders...



Ready to rebuild.



Two down. Had a powdercoat problem on one, was faster to grab another donor then remediate this now.



Doing the clutch perch now too, so I can button up the handlebars soon.



And done with the brakes, other than the lines and filling and bleeding.





Bars on! Master cylinder and clutch perch and new repro switches on too. That beautiful reproduction headlight bucket you see was created by Cary Knapton and Rick Armao, and it fits perfectly, looks fantastic, and doesn't break or crack it you look at it sideways like a stock one will. Awesome. Cary provides nice repro nut and bolt sets for the headlight too, as seen.

[NobleHops]

And that about catches you up!

[daves79x]

Just excellent Nils! We can all take a lesson from your impeccable work.

Dave

[steve murdoch icoa #5322]

Amazing work as always, Nils.
Didn't know about thread restoring taps. Had only just used regular ones. Thanks for the tip.

[Jeff Bennetts]

Looks great Nils!

[NobleHops]

Thank you gentlemen. It’s been a while since I contributed a project thread, hope it’s entertaining.

[FalldownPhil]

Just WOW !!
Looking Very Nice
Best,
Phil