Larry's CX500 project

It's been a couple days but the bodywork is all ready to prime as of tonight. Fixing the tank again didn't help my mood either. Today I finished blasting the rest of the plastics for the bike and filled all the nicks and chips with PlastiFix. Well, I couldn't help it. It kept staring me in the eyes daring me. So I did it! I cut out the flat area of the left side cover and fit a piece from another one to fill it in. Now I have left and right matching side covers. I even tried to match up the mold marks in the back but one was wider than the other.

Still need to do some final sanding in between the grooves, but If the weather gets better tomorrow I should be able to get the first coat of high build primer on it all. That way I can put all the body work on the bike so I can get a cleared picture in my mind of what I want to do with the paint. All I keep seeing is the all flat black picture that's up near the top of the thread. It has my brain locked up right now!



I ordered a cover for the bike yesterday too along with a set of mirrors. I got lucky and found a cover in black and red. I guess that nails down my choice of colors.

I can't believe it's been 9 months since I last posted here about getting the GL500I that had interrupted this build. A lot has happened in that time as I'm sure most of you that were following this build know. The quick clean up and sell of the GL500I ended up being a very extensive rebuild that ended up in Ramprat's garage. Glad to see it's still in the family too. Thanks Joel!



During those 9 months I had the pleasure of reading a post by Mr. Breeze (Scott) that he was looking for a 79 CX500D so he could go back and relive his early years when he had bought a brand new 79 CX500 Deluxe. At the time things were a little tight on my end financially so I decided to reply and show him the bike I was building for myself. To make a long (4 month) story short, Mr Breeze wants my build. It took a while to settle with it but I figured what the heck! I built this one; I can build another one if I really want to later. Heck, I have 2 more on the side of the garage! So the plans were put into motion even while I was building the GL500. Scott and I talked about what he really wanted. An original deluxe model with the same deep candy red color and the original style chrome headlight bucket and gauges. I agreed thinking it wouldn't be any problem doing the change over. Little did I know!



After the GL500 left I took a few days off and promptly got tired of taking it easy. That WAS my plan to take it easy for a while and relax. I'm going to have to see if they have a video on how to do that! Well, off I went into finding the parts for the gauges. Most of them I had but they were not to the standard I wanted. So the search and buying started. Thanks to the members here I got most of what I needed to do the change from Std. to Deluxe.



The main issue I found was that the wiring harness and the controls would have to be changed to make it period and model correct. The early Std. wiring harness had larger plastic connectors for the controls than the Deluxe does. So I had to change out the entire wiring harness and control assemblies.

This is just one example of what I'm referring to.





So I set about rebuilding a wiring harness with the correct plugs on it. Cleaning ans lubing all the plug ends and completely rewrapping the entire harness.





After stripping the bike back down to the frame and wheels to clean things up after sitting for this long as well as making it easier to remodel it, I got started redoing it from what you last saw.





I mocked up the gauge package so I could do an inventory of what all I would need to buy to accomplish the change. Here's what Scott wanted in the end.





But since I had just acquired a 120 mph speedometer I decided to rebuild that and reset it to 00000 since the bike is pretty much all new with a completely rebuilt motor. Why not start it's life over on the odometer too! That can be seen in my link of resetting a speedometer to 00000.



It will be at zero when the bike hits the road again.



After a bit of work getting things ready I reassembled the bike and did a preliminary hook up of the wiring system to make sure I wasn't missing anything.





When I turned the key on the minimal setup I had set in place lite up just fine. Starter, turn signals brake lights etc. worked just fine.





Now comes all the details that follow to bring everything up to standards I can live with. When I get the bike completed and running again the way it was before I started the remodel, I get to do another tank for it. You see, Scott has been inspired by some resent bikes. You'll get to see that later when I get started on the update. But the main reason I got another tank to put on the bike is that I didn't realize I had done all the prep work on a late model Std. tank. I didn't notice that it had the larger fitting for the vacuum operated petcock. So since I'm building a 79 deluxe I needed to change that so that it was correct for the year and model. I even got a set of 79 Deluxe carbs to build for it.



So basically I'm starting over in a way. But the changes will be quit nice when it's done. There is a CJMC bike show on the weekend of June 4th. I'm not sure I'll make it but I'm going to try and get it done to enter it in the show.



Update will be forthcoming as I make progress. I just hope I don't get many interruptions in the next couple weeks.