The sealed lead-acid battery from Batterymart arrived today. It tucks in nicely in the ghetto electronics box I threw together. It measures around 4" x 3" x 2" and just barely sticks above the frame rails, which is fine since I plan on putting short risers under the seat when I get it. It's a 12V 2.9ah which should be sufficient to drive the coils. In other news I fell asleep and missed the bid on a CL175 high mount exhaust in good shape, which ended up going for $80. Crap, guess it's back to the drawing board to design some low pipes. I did find a deal I couldn't pass up on a pair of Mikuni VM 24-26 carbs. They will need some adapters made to fit the stock intake manifolds but I think they should work.

ok so the battery tray looks better from a distance

strapped down

Two birds with one stone today. I rigged up a kill switch and mount to replace the heavy old ignition switch and got rid of some old computer junk too. It's bent up out of a PCI block off plate and a 3/4" pipe clamp. Total cost: $7.04

The new hotness

Old and busted

Me and the Ninja 650 trundling down the Tail of the Dragon last month on the way to Alabama

While I wait for parts to come in for my little CB, here are the photos I took on my road trip to the Barber Museum last month

So here's where the project stands after about a week of work:
The motor is apart and waiting for a gasket set to come in from someplace in east Asia and I managed to mount the tires I bought last year but never did anything with. They are Michelin M62 Gazelles, which are a moped tire but rated for 93 mph. These will have to go before the bike touches a track. I resprayed the tank and gave it a stripe for extra speediness and have been doing general polishing and cleanup. Also, my Woodcraft 31mm clip-ons arrived today and I got them mounted in time to take some glamour shots.

Looking better already

Striped - for extra speediness

I did a few other small things in the past week. Lightened the front sprocket cover, replaced a lot of the stock philips screws with socket head screws and fabricated a battery box and tach mount out of an old aluminum Shuttle PC case. The project is basically at the 'waiting for parts' stage right now. I have a set of Motobits rear-sets on order as well as new hand controls and a much lighter 12V 2.9ah battery. Until then I'm stuck ogling fairings and trying to figure out how to route the exhaust.

Upon opening up the head I noticed the exhaust valves look a little toasted. I may need to get some replacements for those, although the rest of the motor looks very clean inside.

Shiny and holey. That's at least an extra horsepower right there!

I'm keeping this blog as a journal to keep track of the things I do to keep myself from going crazy living on a farm in the boonies. I expect it to consist mostly of motorcycles and music but one never knows.

This is my latest project, a 1973 CB175 that I've had for a couple of years but never put much time into. I traded my old Marlin 336 in 35 Remington for this old girl and managed to get her running but never did much else. I recently decided that I'd like to get into vintage motorcycle racing so this is where I'm starting. This is how the bike looked a week ago, basically bone stock aside from the Andrews coil I installed last year to cure some ignition issues.

The CB175 in all her 70's glory

Last week I stripped the bike down to the bones and dove in, grinding the unnecessary bits off the frame and giving it a quick squirt of primer and silver. I ground off the rear mud-guard, seat mounts, steering lock and helmet hooks but decided to keep the original footpeg mounting plates to make fitting an oil pan easier in the future. I had painted the tank red when I got the bike years ago, the original color was a gloriously 70's gold under years of bad resprays.

The keepin' stuff pile

The junkpile

Here's the bin of parts that are not going back on the bike. The bin will get a lot heavier as I remove the starter, stock mufflers, handlebars, side and center stands etc.