Two milestones happened yesterday....

1528 Views 16 Replies 10 Participants Last post by ragbagger, May 9, 2011

formz

Discussion Starter · May 6, 2011

Milestone one: I got my bike on the road!

Milestone two: It was the first time I had ever ridden a bike any substantial distance!

Quick cliffs: Bought a 1980 CX500 from a guy in RI. It needed some work. Rebuilt the carbs, put back the front turn signals that had been hacked off, replaced rear brake light switch and did some other repair work on it. And yesterday, I finally was able to ride her! She runs great, and sounds great. I'm going to ride her for a couple weeks then get the mufflers replaced as one of them is completely rotted out, and the eventually I'm going to get her painted. But here she is after the first 20 miles!

Thanks to everyone that has answered my questions on here, you were all fantastic.

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marshallf3

· #3 · May 6, 2011

Looks good. Many people use the muffflers from a Harley as you can often find them for free at a dealer or $10 max each. Many Harley riders like louder pipes so these get replaced when new or almost brand new. They also show up on eBay but that's usually the more expensive route.

There are several companies that make exact reproduction mufflers for the C500 Standard and Deluxe, TAS gets them in from time to time as do many other places if you Google around a bit. Exact replacements for a Custom are next to impossible to find, I had to pay $235 to a place in the U.K. to get mine but they were dimensionally exact, very thick steel and have what appears to be a very professional, thick chrome job on them.

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marshallf3

· #9 · May 7, 2011

formz said:
In CT, we HAVE to take a 23 hour rider safety course to get our license. I think I'll be pretty well versed after getting yelled at for that long

Luckily ours only lasts for two days but it costs over $200, alternately you can trailer or get someone with a motorcycle endorsement to ride your bike to the test track so you can demonstrate your riding skills under all sorts of (I hear) very demanding conditions as well as taking the written test.

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marshallf3

· #13 · May 9, 2011

Still pisses me off, I've been riding for over 40 years without a wreck (the crashes on dirt don't count)

We didn't need any endorsement until about 10 years ago then all you had to do was take the written,

now they've added the requirement of either taking the MSF or going through their torture track.

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