7. SEAT & TANK

Heres the 'glassed up Buell S1 seat unit.Its nicely abbreviated but will need widening at the front.
The tank is my figlass copy of a Kawasaki Zepher.
I wound up taking a skin mold of the original CX tank bottom,then added brass 1/4" bsp petrol tap threads, a pair of metal front lugs scavenged from an old Honda tank & a steel rear mounting tab.
The filler cap got recessed into the top along with its captive m5 metric nuts.
The whole lot was then joined together using a colloidal silica/ polyester resin mix covered with several layers of 6oz. cloth.
Then the insides were sloshed with about 1/2 a cup of epoxy resin to seal and fuelproof it

Buell S1 seat unit

CX500 figlass tank bottom 

Tank bottom completed

Tank b4 primer

6. MOLD CHOICES

Decisions decisions
Am trying to garner a coherent look for this project.
I've always liked the no nonsense approach Buells have so after delving into my figlass mold collection it was decided that a Kawasaki Zepher tank combined with a Buell S1 seat tailpiece and an early Ducati 900SS frame mount 1/2 fairing would be the go.

Bodywork mockup

Bodywork mockup 2

Looks like the fairing needs shortening & the seat needs widening but I do like the tank as it changes the bikes lines a lot.
Here I'm trying to decide which front mudguard would work.

Inspirational pic

5. SHINEY BITS

The motor is in a very sad state so in an effort to bring it back to life I decided to have a go at  polishing up the rocker and clutch covers.
So I spent the best part of a day in front of my 1.5 hp. Ryobi bench polisher/grinder.
I like to use a stitched calico buff with dark grey rouge.This is really meant to be used on stainless steel but it seems to get a nice lustre faster than the red rouge does.
To 'polish off' (pun intended) I like to use a clean loose cotton buff with the white rouge & then a good wipe with a clean cotton rag.

Rocker cover b4 

Covers after polishing

4. TUBEWORK

Now the frame needed a new back end to take the Buell S1 tailpiece I had previously 'glassed up.
So I referred to the heat department and fired up the trusty mapgas torch on some unsuspecting scrap 1" tube and viola a nice curved subframe slowly evolved.

New subframe

Busted out the Invertor welder and tacked her on.I fabbed up a couple of shock top mounting brackets and bolted them on.
Sat back to admire my handiwork and realised the swingarm looks a bit spindly and unsupported so that's the next job on the list.
Hunted round a while and found a nice u bend amongst my 'pile of potentially useful parts' or as my wife calls it 'yur junkpile'.
Here's the results of that session.

Modded swingarm

Modded swingarm inc brace

3. MAJOR SURGERY

Well that seemed almost too good to be true so I'll try my luck once again and have a go at adapting a Kawasaki GPX 1100 monoshock.
This involved major surgery.
Out with the 18v Ryobi recip.saw and soon the offending bits are hacked off.Blimey there's no going back now!!

Bits cut off

Fabbed monoshock plates

The CX frame is a bit ugly but soon itll become nearly unrecognisable.

Modded frame

I made up a set of brackets and soon enough the original swingarm was pivoting nicely.

Monoshock mockup

2. BEARING ADAPTION

The astute among us will have spotted a pair of GSXR 1100 usd forks in the previous post.

All Balls conversion kits

steering stop removal

After a little research I discovered these will adapt nicely to the CX headstock via a set of "All Balls" head bearing conversion  kits. I then set about grinding off the original steering stops and did a trial fitting.The only real downside is that given the tank I planned to use from a Kawasaki Zepher, the lock ended up a bit restricted.

INAUGURAL POST

Well,where to begin?
Having a recent clean out of my 40 foot container,i soon  realised that there was enough spare CX 500 frames and swingarm/diff parts, forks, motors  and comstar wheels to piece together a bike....
I'd been spending way too much time on the web looking at other people's builds and so wound up suitably inspired to see what I could come up with

Engine as was

USD forks

Frame start point

Comstar choice