mitch's big block 85' cb50

[Mitch.W]

so yet again i failed at finishing a project and sold my honda chaly 90% complete, but for good reason, Blake had chucked his cb50 up forsale and i nabbed it and needed to pay for it somehow. 

quick rundown for those of you who don't know the bike, its a 85 cb50, with an xl100 motor installed, some bigger tires, coole lights, cool seat, genreal tidy up etc

 

plans are to ride it and enjoy it go on some wild adventures on it, probably source another fuel tank to repaint in some wild colours, strip the wiring loom down to bare essentials and slowly rebuild the spare xl100 motor i have to eventually drop in there. 

only photo i have of it currently, enjoy 

[Mitch.W]

I've been hooning this thing a bit. 

ran into my first issue which was the lights stopped working and we couldn't find where in the original loom the break was so ended up just wiring the headlight and tail lights straight to the stator through the trail tech which worked a treat and that also ment i could ditch all the original handlebar controls and ignition switch and rip out the entire old loom which tidied the bike up a whole heap. 

bike ended up dieing on me on my way home from work and had to push it home, it had lost spark so i pulled the side cover off and turns out one of the screws out of the stator had made its wat out and had a bit of fun behind the flywheel and knocked the points and one of the windings. so i chucked my spare stator in and after mucking around with the weird timing advance setup these use managed to get it going just in time for the penny pincher's first big ride.

We managed to travel around 550km's over two days all on back road and gravel which was  super fun my bike ended up making it to the lodge where we stayed the night then when i when i was full cut and tried to start it to do a drunken skid as ya do there was no one home and we couldn't get it to fire up at all the next day which was lame, have a feeling something to do with the points is fucked again so it may be time for a xr100 motor with a cdi setup for reliability. 

i ended up riding one of the other boys a50's on the way home and that was a great time, really have to work hard to keep those things humming up hills and just in general.

Note: the Irvine's mince and cheese pipe sitting on the engine casing, i recommend 50km  @9000rpm to warm i through throughly 

Next plans for the bike are to get it going reliably, ride it more, i am wanting to play with a fibreglass mould for a new seat pan and recover it in some brown leather, also i managed to destroy the speedo drive in the original speedo on this ride so may end up getting some nice small desecrate  rev and speedo gauge, also get a good quality tail light as the aliexpress ones seem to rattle apart easily this being the second one i have killed. 

[Mitch.W]

i should probably update this more. 

Junked the xl100 motor as i couldn't be bothered with stators etc anymore and bought a 1992 xr100 motor, got it bored out to 54mm and chucked a fresh top end in it for DGR bike was running super rad at DGR until the last 10mins it wouldn't rev above 5k rpm and was making a hell of a top end noise, got home and pushed it into the corner in the shed and gave up for a bit. 

 

 

[Mitch.W]

Managed to get acouple of 35mm film photos at DGR too which didn't turn out too bad 

 

decided i should check out what was wrong before Te Urewera, pulled the rocker cover off and one of the adjuster grub screws for the rocker arm had worked its way out and had a bit of a party in the top end i dug it out and it looks to have been smashed about by the valve spring, i put a new one in and got it going mint. top end is a little rattly now but it works so im not touching it. 

Rode the Te Urewera ride weekend just been and had a hell of a time so much fun smashing the bike about, getting confident on the gravel hooning around a corner got thrown off and high sided the bike bending the foot peg and breaking the front leaver off and grassman came to the rescue and had a spare fa50 leaver that worked, front brakes proceeded to lock on randomly after that, thanks to the boys for helping me rebleed the cable discs, managed to rip the rubber intake manifold resulting in 5000rpm idle for the last half of sunday and assisting in trying to throw me off the outside of corners which was fun. 

Just to finish it off the bike fell over on the trailer on the way home in the dark and we didn't notice, ripped my seat and broke the clutch leaver. 

the bike is in a sad tate now but will motivate me to finish making my new seat pan and get the seat finished and powedercoat the frame while im at it,

Thanks to J5 and the other boys for organising the ride and everyone else for a good time!

[Raizer]

7 minutes ago, Mitch.W said:

 grassman came to the rescue and had a spare fa50 leaver that worked

Even better, it's a Vmoto Milan lever

[Truenotch]

It was wicked fun hooning with you over Te Urewera. This little beast is impressively quick and seems to handle the gravel with ease. Can't wait to smash more gravel with you dudes in the future. 

[Vintage Grumble]

This was one of the churest bikes on the trip I reckon. I was right behind you when it decided it wanted to lie down and swing some O's by itself, lols.

[Mitch.W]

did a bit of long overdue maintenance on this thing, I vibrated the speedo to bits with too much gravel riding on the motu, ordered a mmc speedo and slapped that on, waiting for my new headlight to arrive too. 

old

new 

replaced the clutch which was long overdue, started slipping before distinguished gentleman last year and I packed some washers behind the springs to give it some more clamping pressure and just left it but as it worked I just never put my new clutch in, decided to smash that in and man it feels so much better, leaver is so much lighter 

new spring on the right vs old ones 

[Mitch.W]

east cape is coming up so thought i better actually fix this from last year/make it faster. 

started off by making up a new seat and brackets to hold bits and pieces this weekend, will fire it down to Lewis and he can work his magic on it for me.

then stripped it down to a bare frame and packaged all the bolts up to get sent off to get re zinc plated.

will do the standard sandblast and powdercoat for everything to tidy it up. 

 

next is motor work, big carb upgrade, stainless exhaust etc. will see how motivation goes and how distracted i get by other projects 

 

 

 

[Mitch.W]

got this thing back from powdercoating

all the bolts, springs and brackets came back from zinc plating 

got the motor pretty well scrubbed down and most of the bike put together today. 

ive got to make a new intake manifold for the xr200 carb and i have a nice stainless steel muffler i need to make the rest of the exhaust for and some new foot pegs wouldn't go a miss. 

still plenty to do before eastcape, seat should come back from upholstery tomorrow so will be good to see the bike looking mostly complete and tidy  

[Mitch.W]

I bought a purpose built moto stainless muffler, started making up a stainless exhaust, just waiting on couple of bits to be finished at the machine shop. 

my seat arrived back from the upholsters, looks okay might get it recovered and change my design a little bit after east cape. 

[tortron]

where did you get the muff?

[Mitch.W]

29 minutes ago, tortron said:

where did you get the muff?

purpose built moto is Australia, super nice bit of kit! 

[tortron]

Looks sweet (and like it will fit in the space I have) will hang an ear out when I see you ride past and see if it's quiet enough

[Mitch.W]

I hoping its as loud as my last muffler, it comes with an optional baffle which went straight in the bin

[Mitch.W]

took this for its maiden voyage tonight, seems to run good and didn't fall to bits or blow up. Ran a little bit leaner than before from having the larger dia header pipe so smashed a bigger main jet in and it seems to be good! 

i skipped some stuff but i added a billet tail light, new headlight and front guard, gave the motor a quick birthday refresh and did a skid and all seems go for te urewera next weekend 

[anglia4]

Looks great! How fast does it go with the wee XL hundy?

[Mitch.W]

13 hours ago, anglia4 said:

Looks great! How fast does it go with the wee XL hundy?

its an xr100r motor, seems to get along pretty well, max speed is about 110-115kph i think? such a good combo, the tune isn't perfect but hopefully can iron it out