Had this one a little while but never bothered a project thread, guess I should put the effort in. I bought this cheeky little 1981 Honda CM200T when I went into the local bike shop to pick up some paddock stand bobbins. 35k miles, only two owners from new. Started on the electric start first time from cold, ridiculous. They had it up at £600, I gave them £500, job done.
It was exactly what I'd been looking for - something cheap, easy to work on, mechanically sound but in need of some TLC. The previous owner had put a ridiculous amount of effort into the engine (he's noted every oil change he'd ever done), but it doesn't look like it'd been cleaned since it left the factory. New enough to be metric, new enough that parts are still available, old enough to be a piece of cake to work on. After its first rinse:
Front forks were working okay but it's all fairly shabby:
Clocks showing their age, plenty that can be painted up here.
Winner of the "most inappropriately juxtaposed tax holder in history" award.
Front mudguard is knackered, clearly had water stuck between the two parts at some point, that's a bugger.
Gonna replace this lot now thin wall cable and less unwieldy connectors are available.
First disassemble and scrub down, so much black crap everywhere.
After its first proper scrub, can actually see what it all does now:
Chain before:
Chain after:
Front end off for some loving:
Sexy new paint on some of the panels, just a rush job for now. Panels aren't perfect so if I care that much I'll buy replacements for a few quid and spend more time on the paint:
Knowing full well how long I drag these projects out for, I've been ridiculously organised on nuts and bolts.
Front end cleaned, struts resprayed, new cables:
Plasti-Dip on the guages and light, look like new:
And then I stopped to tidy up my nuts and bolts into my new handy drawers. This was probably the highlight of my year.
All Dymo'd up and everything. That should make the rebuild significantly quicker.
