Last November someone gave me what he called, "Old Blue", a 1963 frame with a 1965 engine. I travelled half a day to pick it up 'sight unseen' and another half day to bring it home whereupon my wife looked at it sideways a few seconds before calling it a "bit of an Ugly Betty". My father-in-law looked at me sideways a few seconds before saying nothing.
It's twelve years younger than I am and is my second motorcycle, the first being a 1968 Honda CT90 K0 which I brought back from the dead last summer and rode this spring when I passed my license test.
I've been working to transform the Ugly Betty into something more like a Black Beauty and about a month ago I started it for the first time in 30 years. A couple of weeks ago I rode it for a total of 3.7 miles over a 3 day period as a bit of a shake-down test to see if it would shift gears etc. Then I decided the erratic idle was not practical so I dropped the motor to get at the advance mechanism. I also wanted to rebuild the temperamental starter clutch in order to prevent the hair-line crack in the right cover from worsening and rendering the kick-starter useless. That's where I am with it now.
I hope to go back through my photos and post a chronology although many of the shots will surely be near duplicates of others' restoration logs. But what the heck, I don't want to spend the next four rainy months polishing spokes!
For reference: Frame CB77-3170xx Engine CB77E-10015xx
Wilf
Ugly BettyUgly Betty
Thanks, Maia.
Don't be making that ride too soon. There's not much to listen to except for the faint moans of the motor yearning to be in the other room with its frame. But when it was running it sounded pretty cool if you could tune out the clatter of the advance arms flailing around. I don't have baffles for the pipes yet so that made it even more cool! Wilf Here's the other sides from the first day home. It wasn't much to look at when I first saw it but I didn't ride the ferry and drive for 3 hours--an hour on forestry roads--to return empty handed. With it came 4 wheels and 3 boxes of used parts.
I knew the engine was siezed and it was obviously missing a few things--left exhaust, front brake lever, float bowl, half the ignition switch, the headlight and trim...but, it was a Super Hawk. The sidestand didn't appear to be correct because it would fall over without the aftermarket 2 x 6, and the seat looked oddly skewed, but I let it in the door anyways.
Day 2...notes to self:
At least the side covers are in pretty good shape. The selenium rectifier will be replaced with a silicon bridge but there should be lots of room to mount it, along with a winker relay, to the existing bracket. The bike will have to be stripped to the frame for cleaning and repainting, and it looks like the rear fender has already had some body work done to it (probably related to the twisted seat). Uh-oh...the wiring is too much of a mess to be reliable. I may be able to use one of the harnesses from the spares box, and there's a complete ignition switch in there too, but no key. The head and top cover plate look pretty clean and all the fins are intact but the shift lever is beyond repair.
Day 3...and more notes:
Add new tires to the growing parts list, and look for a front brake stopper arm that doesn't have the chrome plating bubbling up. The rear shock shows a bit of road rash (possibly related to the deformed shift lever), and the crack and hole in the rear brake stopper arm are bad news. Fortunately FASTFRED has since supplied me with good used ones in addition to brake and clutch levers and a new carb bowl amongst other things. Looks like a new chain and sprockets are also in order. The front terminus of the wiring rat's nest--I think this is typical for an old machine. Reminds me of the wiring on the old gill-netter I once owned. Add new points and condensers to the Retrobikes parts list. In a few days I might be able to rotate the points cam from its resting place of 35 years (just a few degrees before TDC on the left side).
It's day 6 and time to tackle the front forks--the right one has been leaking all along, so they will both get new seals sometime soon. Fortunately there was a selection of steering damper rods in the spares box (I'm thankful to the donor for having held onto some of this stuff--he must have had an eye to restoring it at one time). I'll mix up a new batch of plating solution and make the metal parts all nice and bright again.
I hate clear-coat--it never lasts! A bit of fine steel wool should brighten up the fork bridge, and the chrome bits should brush up fairly nicely too. I was surprised there was no packing between the bridge and the upper fork covers. A look at the Handle and Steering Stem fiches shows something there, but no dimensions for them in the parts list. A bit of careful mallet work has freed the left fork rather easily. Finally the engine is down and clear.
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