Acceptable "bling"

Chrome can be found on just about every motorcycle on the road today. When used properly, it can look great. When used too much, it can look ridiculous and possibly induce a seizure. (i.e. most 'choppers')

Honda did it right. My friends know exactly what I mean as illustrated by the collection you see below.

Project CB160 - Wheels and Tires

Cleaning your vintage wheels the right way includes most, if not all of what you are about to read. This includes taking apart the wheel completely separating the rim, spokes and hub. Start out by glass bead blasting the inside and center surfaces of the hub to clean them up. You could blast the outside also to remove the factory clear coat, but that could get costly. Instead, wet sand the really rough areas with fine grit emery cloth or if it's not that bad, polish using the aggressive ebony compound. Then move on to the brown tripoly compound with a tight spiral sewn buffing wheel. The next step is to use a white(fine) polishing compound with a loose cloth buffing wheel. Finally, clean and even the finish by hand polishing with some Mother's aluminum polish.

After the spokes and rim have been thoroughly cleaned, start to lace the wheel. On your vintage wheel, in most cases, you will see some slight wear marks from where the spokes were originally. this will help you place the outside spokes where they were prior to cleaning. String all of the outside spokes, then all of the inside spokes on one side of the hub first. Place the rim over the top and begin to thread a few of the nipples through the rim onto the spokes. Flip over the wheel and do the same to the other side. You will have to loosen and tighten spokes in order to get all of the spokes strung evenly. After all of the nipples are threaded hand tight, try to evenly tighten the spokes with a wrench. Test the spokes by tapping them with a wrench as they all should produce about the same tone if they are under the same tension. This part takes a while. After you've finished up, bring it to a local shop for truing and a once over.

The tires that will be mounted on the rims are some Michelin Gazelle M62's. 18" x 2.75" front and rear will cost you about $24 a piece.

Typical oxidized finish followed by Atypical mirror finish:

project cb160 - Disassembly

Disassembly. The easy part. For those that haven't done this on a bike yet, do yourself a favor and make a few small investments. The necessity of these items is totally dependant on the complexity of your bike project, but even with the 60's Honda's it's not a bad idea to pick up a few of these items. The short list includes:

-masking or painters tape
-brush on white out
-quart and gallon sized zip loc bags
-digital camera(take more pictures than you could possibly need)
-a few large size cardboard or Rubbermaid bins
-sharpie markers(preferably multiple colors)


These items will allow you to catalog and organise all those easily losable parts that make up your bike. The last thing you want to have to do is spend your project budget on non performance parts that already own...someplace...


The 160 is getting the complete ground up restoration, as in frame off, parts will be everywhere so organisation is key. The frame will be sand blasted at the a local do-it-yourself blasting shop and then dropped off for powder coating. I've always been impressed with Honda's use of the engine as an integral point of frame support, especially back in the 60's.


Further progress on the frame off restoration:

Project cb160 - Head Assembly

For the first cb160 update from the frozen north, we've got a walk through on head reassembly. I know it's been a while, but cut Eric a break, it's cold as hell up there and sometimes it's hard enough to just get out from under the covers in the morning. What you're about to read worked for Eric, neither he nor I are professionals so don't bitch to me if you fuck something up. First things first, clean everything extremely well, you wouldn't want a bit of leftover media from bead blasting to score a cylinder.















Clean all parts thoroughly as well...















Then begin installing the valves into the head. To help out with this job Eric constructed a crude yet effective tool out of some 1 inch wooden dowel and a c-clamp. the top end of the tool presses down on the retainer and valve spring. The bottom prevents damage to the head. A half inch hole was drilled all the way through the wood dowel, with a channel cut out of the side to install the valve clips. Once the valve spring was compressed enough, the clip is pushed in and the c-clamp is slowly unscrewed. Check to see if the valve assembly has seated itself.

Disclaimer worthy tool...










































Blurry photo of a properly seated valve...














After all the valves are installed, properly grease and install the cam. Permatex Ultra Slick engine assembly lube was used here...














Then install all the rocker arms, timing box and cam cover...












































That's pretty much it. The timing and valve tappets are set when the engine is assembled. I hope this helps somebody.

Project CB160

True to my word, I'm going to start following my own projects as well as my friends projects here on Looks Fast. The first friend project will be a complete restoration of a late 60's Honda CB160, a.k.a. Honda Hawk. He's going to be sending updates to me all the way from his basement in the cold, unforgiving land of Milwaukee. Clearly his tolerance for the cold is much better than mine....or maybe I was just smart enough to leave. On occasion i'll be visiting to help out and check up on things first hand. To start with we've got a sometimes running 160, complete with all parts and no serious cosmetic issues. I used to ride this bike myself for a while and even with bald, rotten original tires, it was a blast.

The engine has been striped and glass beaded so its looking pretty good already. A rebuild kit was purchased off eBay with a 75mm overbore. The kit also came with new valves and valve guides. The Shop in Milwaukee bored out the cylinders and installed the new valves. The shop has been a Milwaukee icon and one of my favorite places since it opened. The guys at the shop are great, they know their stuff and have been an incredible resource for me over the years. You'll be seeing lots of them soon enough as they've been featured on the cafe racer magazine show a few times now. For more info about the shop, check out there site here:

http://www.theshopmilwaukee.com/

The future for this bike holds a rebuilt engine, paint, polish, tires, and possibly a new front drum from a 350.

Here's a couple of shots of the before...











































and the engine...