Elle Parle Francais, et Elle est Belle! (Super service on a '79 CBX)

A mysterious beauty, this gorgeous 79 CBX rolled in wearing footrests with Important Warnings en francais. A clean bike with great bones, but tired and a little...insufficient as the '79 CBX is in a few key regards. This great customer wants a great rider, nevermind the rivet counters and the museums, and so we grafted on the best parts of the later "Prolink" CBX plus a tasty box swingarm donated by a 1983 Honda CB1100F, including its beefier 16mm pivot. We shortened the 1100F piece by 20mm to restore the stock wheelbase, installed fresh bearings and bolted on Ikon 7610s to stabilize the rear end. The front of the bike received a complete transplant of the front end from a 1981 Prolink CBX, plus the RaceTech springs and internals, mounted up with a new set of tapered roller bearings in the steering head. The twin-pot brakes and rotors came along with the front end, all refinished and rebuilt and sealed up with new Techna-Fit stainless steel brake lines and rebuilt master cylinders.

The rest of the bike all got The Business, including rebuilt carburetors, new insulators, adjusted valves, Dyna ignition and coils, plue we serviced the advancer and installed a silent spring-dampened clutch from a Prolink CBX for good measure. We did our favorite wiring upgrades including an ATC fuse block at the steering head, installed a relay to power the ignition directly from the battery, and rebuilt the alternator to handle the additional load of the Dyna while charging the battery at idle.

Cosmetically the bike got the full spit-and-polish, the original Perseus Silver paint was touched up, clear-coated and buffed, a reproduction tail was painted to match (the furnished tail was shattered), along with fresh paint and decals on the sidecovers. And then we put it all together and test-rode it to shake down any bugs and it was awesome and we never photographed it when it was done!

Summary: It starts instantly, it goes crisply, it handles WAY better than a stock '79, it stops WAY WAY better than a stock '79, it charges its battery at idle, it soaks up bumps with aplomb while staying composed, and it looks fantastic. But it still looks like a '79, and that is awesome too.

So picture a really handsome silver '79 CBX with a ton of subtle period mods to make it tons better, plus a customer so happy that he went out and bought a Prolink CBX and had that sent to us so we could do another project together. Now you've got the picture :-).