A Soldier's dirty old CB650 Nitehawk

fazer1sniper

Well-Known Member
So The kid next door tells me he got his first bike. He's recently back from Afganistan and his father gave him his '82 650 Nitehawk. His dad, old , crusty, funny 'Nam vet , who Loved his bike, gave it up to his son last week. The's fighting it out with cancer and went and got himself a scooter & gave the CB to his son. It ran like crap, busted up plastics, bent bar, & generally ran hard and put away wet. I was prety busy last week so thiss week I have been helping him out in return for Budweiser.
Here is what we got so far...
Carbs were just nasty, like the rst of this old bike. Pulled them cleaned them and so on. Swapped ot the rather crappy front brakes and rotors with ones off an 82 Gold Wing I had on the shelf.
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Cut the old bars, welded a drag bar accross the base of them, inverted and cut the old CB signals off the 8" head light mounts and installed a 7" lite of an old Magna, added stock turn signals off a 90's CBR. Lowered the gage cluster by about 3''
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The stock air box looked to be a vaction home to all sorts of critters so we are putting on UNI filter pods on the carbs.
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The New owner of the bike decided that he wanted it painted, so what the hell, I'm a sucker and he's good people, so he picked colors to complement his ne HJC helmet and I went with it...
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NOW.. I have the parts in final clear. Cleaning of the bike, clean & lube the chain, air cleaners & oil breathers need on, and so on, and so on... Hope to hear her run tomorrow. Hope it looks classy and not busy.
 
seeing your past builds.....methinks this even rivals the naked conversion even with all the fabbing you did.....:tup: and AWESOME!
 
That is an awesome build! Loving the paint work! Looks like this ride will serve up many more miles thanks to you. Well done!!! :tup:
 
Looks great! I love that Ace of Spades. Be sure to change out the brake fluid and put on a new front brake line, the one in the photo has seen better days.
 
Looks great! I love that Ace of Spades. Be sure to change out the brake fluid and put on a new front brake line, the one in the photo has seen better days.

I'm up un-gawdly hour for me (in my midnite 12 hour sleep patern) can't sleep. Gonna go hit the shop. I do have a set of brake lines off my old Magna that may fit the bill. I was planning on swapping them out when I get to that stage.
 
I call it done. Back to the bill-paying job tomorrow. I Had to swap out the old front master brake of an old V45 Magna, old one Leaked all over even with the new line.
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I plan to turn out some bar ends for it on the lathe but ran outta waking hours. Added about a pint of fuel in it and it fired up darn fast. Hope to play around with it abit more, I was on a time crunch facing going back to work.
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About 90 minutes from finishing my work shift. Got a vaction day for tonite's shift. Plan to take a nap and then mabe get a few pics of this bike in the sun.
 
Well, this is how the old girl hit the road today. Dad loves it, except for the drag bar, but thats what the boy wanted. Bit hard starting and after a short test ride I brought it back in to adust the cluch cable before a final test. Second time out it buried the spedo at 85mph just before the top of 4th gear. Corners well at speed. Low speed turns are rough by todays standards, but what you would expect from a 28 year old motorcycle. The better brakes and rotors made a notible differnce in stopping power. Soon after these pics, kid took it out for a short 5 mile trip to his grandfather's, who still rides an 81 CB750C. Think he wanted to show off. Thanks for all the kind words on this build from all of you, this one was alot of fun.
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Great job on that old Honda. Just goes to sow what can be done with those older bikes that were put away and left for dead till someone decided to give them another chance. You do a great job with paint which is the hardest thing for most guys to make look decent when doing a project like this. There must be thousands, maybe millions of Hondas, Yamahas, Suzukis, and Kawasakis out there in the same shape just waiting for some youngster to come along looking for a machine to bring back to life. To us old vets of the early Japanese bikes and the Viet Nam era it's great to see and old gem like this one put back in service. Thanks for the inspiration.
 
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