CX650C REBUILD PROJECT
Here's a long post of the rebuild project for a 1983 Honda CX650C. It was originally purchased in October 2004 for $60; with a title! It had been sitting outside for 10 years and was very rusty. The engine had 36,954 miles on it. The engine was seized and there was no telling when this thing last ran. It was bought up in Ocala and was listed for $400 (with a helmet) by a guy living in a trailer home. When I finally got up there I couldn't believe he was trying to sell it for that much. He quickly came down to $200, then $100. I told him he should be paying me to haul this thing away. We settled on $60.
Ok, for those of you who actually know what this bike is, I commend you. You know your Honda motorcycle history. This bike is a one year odd ball. You probably have heard of the CX500. The engine looks similar and its a far more popular bike. It was made from 78-83 and was Honda first v-twin motorcycle. The 500 came in standard, custom, touring and turbo variants. There was also a CX650 turbo in '83. Since it was made only one year, finding parts can be a challenge sometimes. While a few things you can use from the CX500, like the starter for example, most of it is one off for 1983.
Specs:
673cc liquid cooled 80 degree v-twin engine, 5 speed, transverse mounted, shaft drive.
432 lbs dry weight.
64HP, 37-44 ft lbs of torque (depending on the article I've read).
Specs are pretty good considering how light it is for a cruiser.
Bought in October 2004 for $60.
Notice the crash bar. It's extremely rare for this bike. I sold that on ebay recently for $125. Bizarre add-ons include mud flaps, driving lights, and rusty flex pipe connecting the head pipes with the muffler. Tires are rotten, fork tubes are rusted with silver spray paint over them. Gas tank is totally rusted. Why did I buy this thing again?
Big ugly gauges were scrapped. Fuse block was relocated under the seat. Headlight was thrown out. The only thing used in this photo was the triple tree and headlight mounts!
Carbs are totally corroded and eventually were just thrown away as a rebuild was futile. I think that's a water hose for the fuel line. NOT good for gas.
Turn signals, fenders and added rear brake light appear to be from a Suzuki. Check out the awsome "free" helmet. What a POS. Would you where that? In the trash it went.
Here's a close up of the ingenious flex pipe on the exhaust. Pictured is also the regulator that would later fail, and the starter that would die while on a Daytona Bike Week trip a few years later.
More rust. Shocks are junk, rear peg mount is broken. Rear wheel, swing arm, tail cowl, and center stand were used on the final bike though.
WHAT'S THE NEXT STEP?That's the real question. What to do now? I started stripping off all the junk. I decided to make a econo rat chopper out of this bike. At least that was the original intention and the course of the bike changed as certain NOS parts were found cheap.
Here's the bike torn down as I was still contemplating its fate. The gas tank was full of bondo and was eventually thrown away. Now I know the bike had been in a wreck. The steering stop on the frame was gone. Not a big deal as the forks rest on the radiator cover when parked. I almost cut the rear part of the frame off to put on a solo seat. I decided against that.
Here's the back view. Looks pretty cool with those bars, but those were also thrown out along with the controls and grips. All junk. Notice the cool cylinder heads sticking out! CX650 baby, only one of its kind. That hammer had to have been used to get the exhaust off.
Still going on the rat chopper theme, I got some big pipes angled up with automotive pipes. That was all scrapped when I got a used center exhaust collector on ebay and put in a more stock position.
LETS RESTORE THIS THING! APRIL, 2005I happened to find a $50 NOS gas tank on ebay that was still in the box. Then I was offered to do a trade swap for powder coating for advertising on a website that I own. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but I won't do that again. It took six months to get the parts back and it was almost a complete disaster as I could hardly remember how the bike went back together. Yeah, SIX MONTHS!! That's about as much as I want to get into that as it still burns me up today thinking about it. So know it's time to completely disassemble the bike and take it to the powder coater. I took picture of everything just in case I didn't get everything back. It's a good idea I did, too. I labeled all the parts the color they were supposed to be, either black or translucent red over black chrome. Bad ass colors indeed.
Wheels were supposed to be red. I was told by the powder coating he couldn't do them in that color. Which is complete BS. I got the wheels back 6 months later with rusted out bearings as it was evident they sat outside the entire time. I was pissed to say the least. Notice the head tube on the frame. All the welds were ground down to look smooth for a better look. I ended up painting the wheels myself. Black Rustoleum in a can is my secret formula. Put on with a sponge brush. Tough as nails and still looks good today.
You can see more of the welds I ground down here. The engine supports came back and ugly pink when they were supposed to be red. I don't know what the guy was smoking. I had to paint them black to cover up the poor color job. They looked better black any way in this case. The clutch cover got ruined by the power coater, too. He drilled out a non replaceable bearing for the lever. The color looked good, but I had to throw it away. It was replaced with a CX500 one. It's the same part. I also want the tops of the carbs to match the frame. Well, he messed that up, too by letting over spray get on the inside making them useless. These are CV carbs and the clearance inside there is critical. They were thrown out.
All these items were missing when I got the parts shipped back to me. They were all found except the brake rod. I had to buy a new one. Besides those problems, the colors turned out ok. But, since it took 6 months to get them back, it wasn't a pleasant experience. I would have gladly paid someone cash money to get the parts back in a few weeks even.
FAST FORWARD 6 MONTHS TO NOVEMBER 2005Ok, finally got the parts back. What an ordeal! Time to assemble everything. As you can see, the translucent red looks great. The seat cover, which hasn't been installed yet, was special ordered from Travelcade for about $70. I eventually found a good stock seat on ebay and sold this one for a lowsy $70. The stock one looks better. These photos also show the NOS gas tank, newly painted rims, 7/8" drag bars and new Maxxis Barracuda tires. The brake disc was painted with auto paint that just almost matches. Pretty close.
AHH!! I CAN'T FIND ANY MORE PHOTOS!Well, as lame as this is, I can't find any completed photos from 2005. So lets jump to present day 2008. This photo was taken last week.
If you have a keen eye, you'll see some changes. The stock seat was added as I mentioned before. A rear fender was fabricated and mounted. The license plate mount is probably illegal now in Florida. The side covers have pin stripes and skulls. The front end is from an '83 Shadow 750 and has dual disc brakes. I also added Progressive springs to the front. They aren't made for the CX650 so it's the only way to get them on this bike.
The handlebars are 1" bars with Harley skull grips. I had custom bars made that have a 7/8" clamp area so I could mount them. The levers and controls are from an '88 Shadow. I had to custom wire them in to make it all work. The gauges are chopper style mounted on the inside. They clear the tank, but just barely.
Here's the stock seat with 5/8" gel foam installed. This stuff is great. I've got it on 3 of my bikes at the moment. It's used for wheel chairs and hospital beds. Real soft!
A nice light up skull was added to where the old horns went. A horn was added under the seat next to the relocated fuse box.
SOME OTHER INTERESTING NOTES - THE ENGINE GOES BANGWhat is the fate of an engine that sits seized up and sitting outside for 10 years? Well, after putting 2500 miles on the bike after its completion it blew a hole in the cylinder wall on the way back from Daytona Bike Week 2008. This was after putting in a brand new timing chain, stator and water pump seal. The engine started to lose power some where in Ocala and I saw fluid coming out of the back. I pulled over and it looked ok. You see, this bike always ran hot when I rode it so overflow from the radiator happened every once in a while. So I filled it up with water and tried to start the bike. It wouldn't start! It took about 30 minutes to get it going pushing it down a hill. I knew what was happening. The compression so starting to go. So, to avoid being stranded in the middle of no where. I kept the revs up and kept going. Power started to gradually dwindle. I came in near Silver Springs, near town, and had to come to a stop light. When I pulled the clutch in the engine stalled. I was still rolling to I popped the clutch in 2nd gear and it was running again. This time white smoke started coming out of the engine. It wouldn't rev below 3000 RPMS so I had to keep gunning it. My brother pulled up next to me and I shouted to him "This thing is fucked!" I was right. Within a 1/4 mile the smoke got worse and worse. Then something let go and the bike sounded like it had no exhaust on it. Real loud. I kept the bike pinned and it wouldn't go over 20 mph. I finally came to another stop light right near Fat Boy's BBQ, and the engine stopped with a gigantic ploom of white smoke. My brother says he could barely see me. He swears he saw a piece of the engine shoot out from the bike when it went bang. I pushed the bike to the side of the road. It was done. Ironically, this happened about 10 minutes from where I bought it over 3 years ago.
Here's some dry humor that would be found in a funny movie. We passed some old guy on a rusty bicycle 5 miles back. After coming to reality that this bike was fucked, we started pushing it to the nearest parking lot. Guess who passes us on a rusty, squeaky bicycle? The same old guy. We could only look at each other and laugh at that one.
Here's some photos of the hole. Right outside the engine on the right side. See the crack in the cooling jacket.
The head gasket also blew. It only had 500 miles on it as I changed it not long before. I can also ascertain that the engine over heated. I had just did a cooling system flush prior to the trip. But, the temp garage had become spurratic and unreliable. I think the radiator flow was restricted because after inspection, I found it dented at the bottom. Something I didn't notice during the whole rebuild of the bike. You really can't tell until you hold it up to another one and compare.
SO NOW WHAT?So, what do you do with a completely restored bike with a blown engine? I almost parted it out, but couldn't bring myself to do it. I had too much work invested. It was a really sad thing to look at this bike. I put it in my shed with a cover over it and left it. About 3 months later I found an ad on Craigslist for a CX650 parts bike. He wanted $800 for it and I thought it was too much cash. The bike had no title. I went ahead and looked and it and ended up buying it for $600 along with some other spare parts. I parted it out and kept the engine. I ended up selling most the stuff for about $1000. So I made $400 and got a new engine. This bike only had 15,500 miles on it!
This is the doner bike (above). Yes, there is one less of these rare bikes in the world. One must die so another can live! I changed over all of the red engine parts and put the engine in.
Here's the engine waiting to be swapped. I had no idea if it would work as the parts bike didn't run. But, I suspected it would be ok since the mileage was so low. All I had to do was change the spark plugs and it started right up! It runs perfect. I also put in the entire cooling system as well. The coolant gauge hasn't gone past 1/2 since I put the new engine in the bike.
IS THIS BIKE FINISHED OR WHAT?BEFORE 
AFTER
I guess an awesome bike is never truly finished if you like to customize it. It's a blast to ride. It sounds very mean and is pretty quick, too.
