Highlights reel... post Garage reno

During a debate about engine rebuilds this year, it was pointed out to me that many blogs about "rebuilding my first engine" end either in disaster, or the blog is never completed. Spoiler: My bike is finished of November 11th of this year. I did not want this blog to languish in the incomplete realm, so I have created a highlights reel of blogs that I should have posted:

Stripping the bike down to the bare frame was easy and I took lots of pictures. That being said, for all of you other newbies, no matter how many photos you take, it will never be enough. At least 4 times I could not find photos of things that I needed to see, but relied on shots that showed the fit from a bad angle, or I had to wait till I could take a look at one of the other three known 1968/69 CL450s in my area. TAKE PHOTOS UNTIL YOU THINK THAT YOU HAVE EVERYTHING AND THEN TAKE A BUNCH MORE... :-)

Cleaning the frame was a horrible job because this bike seems to have been abused off-road for much of the 36 years that it was not licensed for the road.

I found inches of mud and grass in nooks aound the engine and rear fender. dirt was ground into every place that had a fastener.

After months of cleaning (pre-garage reno) I was able to take stock. The most important thing that I discovered was that the chain guard was missing. In my search to find a replacement, I realized that the guard attaches to the swing arm in three places, but my swingarm had only two mounting points for it. Someone had ground off the middle mounting point.

You can see the leftover nub from the mount cutting, on the left top of the arm closest to you in the photo. I wish that I had had the wits to have discovered this problem as early as this blog will make it seem. But actually, as you can conclude from the nicely painted swingarm in the photo, I found it last year, after I put the chain on and realized that I had no guard to mount :-(.

I could have left it, and simply not had a bolt supporting the middle, but my old swingarm also seemed slightly bent when I attached my rear shocks. I bit the bullet and found another swingarm on E-Bay. The replacement swingarm has the mounting point and the shocks slid on almost effortlessly. I had to paint it to match the rest of the frame and avoid spraying over the original sticker that was still attached to this swingarm.

Front Cushions

Both of the front fork tubes were bent. 3 years on, I cannot remember by how much, but it was HUGE. I took them over to the shop of a friend, with a hydraulic press, and we went to work. The best we could do was on the right one, which we got to .04mm out, at the bend point. This was as close as we dared to press our luck, as we worried about bending it the other way. It was here, in this shop, that I discovered that the damping systems on these tubes were different from each other:

The one on the right in the photo was the one that was not proper (it was the left shock). I could find nobody who could identify what bike that damping system belonged to, but it was not for a Hellcat, so I began searching for new tubes (or at least one). I found them at CMSNL.com: 2 complete front cushions, NOS, for 250 euros each. The cost of just one tube alone was over 600 euros, so this was a great find (and I got the last two).

Seat

The original seat pan was covered in foam that was really not the shape that it needed to be, and the bike came with a replacement cover that could not go over it. It also had a plastic facimile of the trim strip that was completely useless because it would have to be crimped onto the cover (no attaching to the pan). When I took this to a local re-upholsterer, he quoted me over $2000 because he did not know how it was supposed to be shaped and would have to experiment. He told me that I would likely still not be satisfied with the outcome (he had me pegged). He also refused to use the plastic trim, so if I wanted him to include the trim, I would have to get a proper one (yikes). I haven't spoken to this guy since...

There were two original seats listed on E-Bay so I bought what looked like the better of the two.

As you can see it had a couple of small holes in the cover at the front which would need repair, and the foam had compressed so it would need support. In taking it apart to restore what I could, I also discovered that this seat was likely left on its side in a wet area for a long period of time. The left hand side of the seat pan was disintegrting and would need a good welder to repair it. Again, a friend of a friend, Bob Johnson from Johnson's Welding, in Kinburn Ontario, stepped in and completely repaired it. Here is the before:

and the after:

Bob also recommended an upstart auto upholstery company, in Carleton Place, Ontario, to re-fabricate the cover instead or repairing what was very fragile material. I checked out the company and decided to try them out. You can see what they did by watching their video at this link.

The whole cost of buying the unfortunate seat, getting the pan fixed, and getting foam and a new cover was about half of the cost that the first guy wanted (because, I'm sure that he was trying to get rid of me). I am really happy with the result.

Oh, and before you ask... The first seat pan was missing more than half of it's hold-down clips (for the cover) and it had been bronze welded where it had been split (likely by a heavy rider and a hard bounce). Bob and I did consider both of them, but the new pan seemed a better specimen for repair because there was no way to be sure that the old one would not have split again.

Adding a Rear Rack

I wanted a rack for the back, and I found one from a 1969 CL450 on E-Bay. It was a bit surface-rusted, but I was able to get rid of that quite well. Because of how low it sits over the rear light, I have my doubts that it was made for a CL450, but oh, I like the look!!

As I previously mentioned, the bike is done. I tested it offroad on Rememberance Day of this year (November 11) and it is ready for it's safety inspection. I cannot wait to get her back on the road this spring. Here is what she looked like on 11 November 2023:

There was obviously a lot more that I had to do, which would have been written about if I had made the time. If there is anything: like re-chroming, lacing the wheels, fixing the instrumentation, wiring... Please, just leave me a message in the comments and I will dig into my thousands of photos and tell that story.

Small interruption (that lasted almost a year)

We interrupt this blog to bring you a quick update on my project.  As you'll learn in future posts, I had to put the Hellcat back together (spoiler alert) with bent fork tubes, to make a rolling frame, so that I could do a garage reno.... full story of the reno follows.... The bike will return in the future.

So in March of 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, I broke my garage door opener chain.  Being too cheap to hire a specialist, I fixed it myself.

I knew that there was something wrong when, upon testing, the motor box made a regular thunking sound, but "no problem", I thought, the chain is just too tight.  I loosened the chain 3 times, each time hearing that wicked thunking/chunking sound.  On the 4th try, my sprocket sheared.  Ok, a new garage door opener was now in order. 

The previous owner had gerry-rigged a standard garage door opener into a space that was 5 inches too short, because of a ceiling support joist and post situated right in the middle of my double garage door.  I have hated it since the day that I moved in, so 18 years later, I finally got to install a new wall mounted opener.  

The LiftMaster rep then told me what I didn't want to hear:  "The door tracks that you have are low-profile and our opener won't work with them."  

Undaunted, I called a door guy (not-coincidentally, one that sold LiftMaster openers) to see how much the damage would be to get a new door and opener together, with the appropriate track system.  The price was right, and I was about to say yes, when I mused that I had planned to do this reno in three years, not now, but the cement floor, the driveway and the retaining wall could still wait.  I was then deflated when the door guy told me that the cement replacement was guaranteed to change the height of my floor, so I should do the floor before I replaced the door.... DOH!!!

For you Canadians, in he 1980's, Gordon Pape published a book in Canada called the $50,000 Stove Handle, in which he described how a simple trip to an appliance store, to get a replacement handle for his stove, spiraled out of control into a full kitchen reno.  This was my Gordon Pape moment. 

I was very lucky.  I did some research on cement contractors in my area, and there is one that stands above the others.  It was mid-March, and usually cement workers are inactive in my northern climate, but a warmer than usual March had gotten their attention.  It was Friday afternoon when I called the really good guy... and he agreed to come and take a look.  He told me that if I could completely empty the garage within a week, then he could do it in the last week of March, but if I couldn't then I would be in July as he had work scheduled from April 1 until then.

My basement and cold room are still (December 2021) stacked high with shelving, bike parts, tools, and everything else that I could move into the basement.  My bikes, workbench and tool chest were distributed amongst three neighbors houses as the work began...in March.

The space before construction began.  Note the old opener offset to one side of the post (connected to the door on the other side of the post.

 

Ready to pour!

Not really part of the garage, but if borrowing to do this, you may as well go all the way:  New garage door, new driveway and new retaining wall pictured in August.

Once the floor was in, the reno moved outside, where I finally have a retaining wall to keep the garden out of my driveway and a new driveway.  But I digress...

Blocking out the cold:

My garage used to be damp and cold in the winter.  It was so cold that once it got below minus 20 degrees Celsius outside, I had to wear a jacket and sweater, with my space heater going full blast, just to work on the Hellcat (or the other bikes).  This was not optimal, because I would much rather work on mechanics during the winter than during riding weather, but not at the cost of the feeling in my fingertips! (Yes, I'm being dramatic, but you get the point).

If you look closely at the first photos above where the floor is gone, you will notice that the un-insulated foundation of my house formed 4.5 feet of the bottom of my interior walls, so I framed them, installed foam insulation and drywalled:

The last step was to clean 60 years of grime of of the ceilings and walls, then to paint.  I had an idea about how I wanted it to look when finished, and I trusted nobody else to do this, so it took me a very long time (by myself).  I really like the result.  Please let me know if you do!  

The work area.  The wall around the corner to the left had not been painted yet.

The completed job.  You can see the Hellcat on the very right, dwarfed by the bigger bikes.

I just finished the painting yesterday so now the stuff in the basement has to be cleared and put back into place. School ends in February, so I will likely not get back to the Hellcat until then!

Body Work and Paint

Or the things I would rather let the professionals do.

Best photo I could find of the right side of the tank.

  

I sent this tank to Ross Thompson.  For those of you who don't know Ross, he does amazing bare metal tank repairs. I'm not sure if he is retired now, but I got in under the wire.  I also sent the side covers which were also dented.  Note that there are a couple of large dents on the right side, and the left side has only a small one, but it is on a crease in the metal.  The top also has some tiny dents like something repeatedly poked it hard!

What I got back was this...

These were seriously amazing!  The metal was so straight, you would have thought that it had just been molded.  Most impressive to me was that the tiny dents on the top of the tank, which are clearly notable in the third photo above, were not visable and could not be felt. They were gone, as were the bigger ones!  The tank was pressure tested and sealed on the inside with POR-15.  I was very happy!

Thanks Ross!  (This is not the last that I'll write about Ross, because he also knocked the dents out of my fenders and fender braces, but that is work that is still in progress.)

Now, this was bare metal that I got back, so it was important that I get it at least primed very quickly, so off it went to Ottawa Valley Custom Paint.  Chris, the owner, is a very talented painter and has an eye for colour matching, which was very important because the paint formula no longer survives.  It is Candy Paint, and we looked at several photographs, including one that I found online of a '68 that had been stored indoors since almost new.  We guessed at the formula, and I think that we came pretty close if not right on.  I almost went for larger silver flaking, because it would have looked cool and made the paint job more extravagant, but I really want this to be as close to original as I can make it.  Chris had never seen Ross's bodywork before.  He thought it was pretty spectacular.  There is no Bondo on this tank, a thick coat of primer and a sanding was all that he needed to do. (Another bow to Ross Thompson)

I had Chris attach some replica "450" metal decals that I sourced from Badger Replicas in Australia to the side covers.  This is what I got back:


   
The last step was to add some reproduction emblems that again were from E-bay and the polished gas cap.  Voila!  My new tank!

I also had my frame and all the black metal parts painted, but by a local painting and powder coating shop.  Black enamel paint looks good!

Before - This photo was taken around Christmas, 2018 as I was cleaning 36 years worth of
accumulated oil, grease and dirt. 

After - This photo was taken a month ago.

The COVID-19 Pandemic restrictions are giving me more time to work on the bike, so hopefully I will be able to post more often as it progresses.  The problem with COVID is getting parts in from the United States, so I can only work with what I can source locally or already have.

Luckily, that is a lot.

Rookie mistake

So, in my last post I said that it would be a few weeks before I could post again... I guess 52 is a few.  Lots has happened on the Hellcat, but nothing has really changed.  The first exciting thing occurred at the end of June, when I confirmed that the motorcycle actually ran!

Initial evaluation of the bikes condition beyond the damage that I caused in dropping it were as follows:

• Headlamp bucket was broken where it holds the metal rim in place.  This part is plastic.
• The fork top covers on both sides were dented pretty badly.  So much so that I wondered whether the forks below were damaged as well.
• The handlebar was not original, but is that really a problem?!?
• The tank was badly dented, and one of these is on a crease in the original design.  Also, the tank badges were missing (and no longer manufactured).
• The seat: missing rubber parts underneath and is covered with foam that is too high and the wrong shape for the replacement cover that came with the bike
• There is a proprietary bolt on the side covers that is missing on the left side - this bolt is no longer available.  Also, both side covers are dented in.
• Rear turn signals had covers that were from a later model Honda (again, is that a problem?)
• The lower tailpipe was missing (and no longer manufactured) and the upper one (which is a part of the single piece construction of the whole muffler) had some sort of chrome separation which looks very ugly.

The worst find (which I did not recognize the significance of when I made the purchase) was that at some time the muffler had been sawn in two.  The muffler originally came in one piece from right manifold to top tailpipe.  When it was welded back together, there was a 2" gap in the chrome where a smaller diameter piece of exhaust pipe was used in the connection.  This pipe has since rusted and it is very noticeable.  In my opinion, it destroys the look of the high tailpipe that first attracted me to this bike. Of all the things that I had to consider, this was the one that I felt would make or break the project.

So, why is this called "Rookie Mistake" I hear you wondering...

In May of last year, just before my last post, I found a New Old Stock (NOS) muffler unit for an early model CL450 on e-bay.  There was a part number in the title of the auction, and I went to CMSNL.com  and put my VIN number in so that I could see the parts list.  (Some guy was selling an original, old stock,  parts list on e-bay for $150, I scoff, firstly, nobody needs an OLD parts list, the age of the paper does not add value, and they are available online, so good luck buddy).  After confirming that the E-bay part number matched the one on CMSNL for my year and model, I quickly removed the old muffler from my bike and took it to a local custom bike shop.  I asked about what it would cost to fix and re-chrome the old one.  The cost astounded me,,,minimum $2000 and he found a hole on the underside which had about an inch of discoloration around it.  He felt that the inside had some problems that were going to shorten the life of the muffler.  $2000 was twice what I paid for the bike, so the NOS part was looking pretty attractive and I now had a maximum bid.  Needless to say, I did win the auction and in June of last year I came into possession of what I believed would become the centerpiece part of my restoration. 

Now, it was obvious in the photos on e-bay that there were five threaded mounting sites on the outside of the NOS muffler for the heat shields, and I did realize that my own shields had only 4 mounting nuts, but the part number was correct so I assumed that I simply would not use one of the mounting sites.  Within an hour of getting the part unboxed, however, I became aware that the mounts are completely in the wrong locations and I had purchased the wrong part. 

I now realized that I couldn't rely on part sellers websites to get the part numbers for my restoration,  but $150.... I had to draw the line somewhere and that was it (it's probably still available online if anyone is interested)  Eventually, I found a guy who had a PDF copy which I was able to snag for a much more reasonable $30, and from that I found that I did indeed have the wrong part.  I have not yet found the actual part number on any online parts diagram, on any site!

Months of soul searching followed, and several times I felt like running to the custom bike shop to see if he could customize it to fit my shields (don't worry, I didn't do it--- the muffler is completely unmolested and still in its original packaging). 

My agony ended in March, when I noticed another e-bay auction for a "Complete 1969 CL450 Exhaust" used, but in excellent condition.  This muffler came with heat shields attached so I could see that they were the same as mine, it also had the lower tailpipe, left manifold and a triangular mounting bracket for the underside that mine was missing. 

Another auction, another win (and for half of the price that I paid for the NOS one), and finally I have my intact muffler.  The lesson here is: ALWAYS BUY THE PARTS LIST  (and if you are the guy trying to flog one for astronomical sums of money, you should be ashamed of yourself).  Now I have to learn how to sell my duplicate parts on E-bay!