Went out this past weekend with the intention of fighting the bike to get the engine out of the frame.

Turned out to be like everything else up to this point, fairly easy. I knew I would have to lay the bike over on its side and let gravity do the work, and it was almost just as easy as that. I laid the bike over to it's right side, the left wouldn't do as I want to keep the shifter in place until I absolutely must remove it. Once the bike was on its side it was just a matter of some shaking and manipulating to start with.

It came down to only one impediment, the oil filter and its housing. A 12mm socket and some lefty loosey and it came right off. After a little bit of manipulating, mostly paying attention to the exhaust header studs, I only had to stand the frame back up and it was done.

I put the filter and housing back on, cleaned the block up a little bit and now its set off to the side of the garage. I'll come back to the motor later down the road. I need to do some reading on how I can turn the motor through a couple of rotations. The kick starter doesn't want to budge. Why is that? I feel like I have it in neutral, but whose to say? The shifter moves freely and I can feel the various detents for the gears...not sure what I'm up against here yet.

This build as I see it, breaks down in to five parts. Engine, forks, exhaust, seat and paint. There are some small ancillary items to be sure, but the meat is those five items. The forks, to me the forks are going to make this thing what it is. Using modern, inverted, gold GSX-R forks with clip ons will really give me the custom look I want. It will also very likely be the bulk of the money I spend here. I’m thinking $3,500.00. Ok, so there’s that. Then there’s the engine. I’m not looking forward to the engine. Monitarily I’m probably looking at $500.00 to $1,000.00 for the engine rebuild, and I’m including the carbs in with that. And I’m really not looking forward to the carbs at all. I might have to farm those out. I tried the kickstarter the other day and she’s frozen so we’ll have to see what’s what there.

The thing about the engine is workspace. I’ll have to come up with a tear down bench or area to do that work, but this weekend I’ll get the exhaust off and get some Kroil down in the cylinders, see if I can free things up a bit.

Oh, and then there’s the tank. Opened that today for the first time and yeah, rusted. Now I’m not to concerned with this, as I’ve already been down this path with the NS.

Today I got the first real start on the bike. I have to say that pulling parts from the bike was much easier than I was expecting. And the future started to take place very quickly.

I guess I should lay out some sort of a plan here. Just by removing the rear fender and tail lights you get the aesthetic we’re looking for. I really want to swap out the front forks. I like the gold anodized look that people are getting using front ends from GSX-Rs, so I will be looking to go that route in the future. I also want to swap out the exhaust, though not certain what I will do there just yet.

I really like a lot of what’s going on on this 550.

OK, so here’s the star of our show. It’s such a good looking bike on its own, I have to pause and think sometimes if I shouldn’t just bring it back to original. But no, that’s not the future I see for this thing. I really don’t want to spend months searching the internet and swap meets looking for parts needed that are correct for the year and what not. Ok, so going to swap meets wouldn’t be so bad. But they would more fun looking for trick parts right?

Well...here we go again. I did this blog thing once before back in 2010, 13. I had an NS400R back then and thought it would be fun to chronicle the journey I would take while restoring it back to running condition. And you know what? It was. I eventually would get the NS “running”, and there is a link to that blog here on these pages if you’d care to check that story out. The NS blog never came to fruition though. It just died, leaving my throngs of NS enthusiasts and seekers of literary prose that would rival the likes of Wilde or Kipling or...Grisham? With narry another word of the mighty NS and our endeavor to carve the backroads of Alabama to a two stroke symphony. So I’m back. The NS is gone. I didn’t have the money or infrastructure to continue with the restoration, and the truth is, I wanted to ride. I found it a good home, trading it for a 2006 BMW F650GS Dakar, which I still have today. I moved away from Birmingham too; to the sunshine state. Florida.            I miss you BHam.

This blog is primarily to document the soon to start chop and rebuild of a 1975 Honda CB550 that is currently acting as mini, metal, Cabrini Green to a bunch of spiders in my garage. If I follow suit with the NS blog, my next entry should be in a couple of years. My name is Edward, thanks for stopping by.