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posts / Meanwhile 12/6/2020

I haven't been much on the updates, which is a shame because boy have I been scraping rust off a nearly worthless old motorcycle, and there's just not enough of that sort of thing available online. Jokes aside, I do enjoy the content of youtube channels like Restoration of Everything, Hand Tool Rescue, and Illestrator, and that's pretty much what they do over there. Check it out, it's good stuff.

Here I am on a project with lots of rust removal and half-ass rewiring jobs from the first Bush administration, and I got nothing to say. I like the idea of documenting things as I go but man, setting up cameras and writing clever articles about it online takes time. Respect to the content creators, but I just wanna go head down on this stuff until 1am and last meal I had was lunch I think and my god, why did so many spiders leave egg sacks on this motorcycle???

Oh right, I guess I better fill in some details. Here's the cliff notes.

I got a Honda CM185T.

Two motorcycyles on a trailer How it went: after getting thoroughly owned by all the other racers at the last race of the Cascadia Supermoto's 2020 season, I dipped out to Spokane to visit family and I dunno, maybe pick up that motorcycle I left in their garage 17 years ago. This is the bike I learned to ride on, a 1979 Honda CM185 Twinstar. It was great catching up with my step parents, and it turns out they were more than happy to have me remove the crusty little bike from their garage, finally (more garage floor for my brother to spread his tools around on).

I am glossing over a lot about the trip, because it turns out that two of my siblings have also taken up riding, so I got to go out on some of the backroads around Spokane riding with them. It was all very wholesome hallmark special type shit, but I'm gonna try to stay focused on the bike for this one.

The Bike

Honda's CM bikes are small, simple bikes with relaxed standard ergos, that eventually evolved into the 80's Rebel cruiser bikes and the Nighthawk 250 (the standardest of all standard motorcycles that ever standarded). There is lots of good info about these bikes on Hondatwins.net. Even with that site as a reference though, there is not a whole lot of info about the CM185 model specifically, probably since they also made 200/250 models for a longer time, and there's more of them. So I'm going to try and limit my whinging to info specific to the 185, and/or denouncing shoddy work done on this specific 185 before I got it (probably includes me at 19 not knowing what I'm doing).

Here's some random tips and things I have found out about the Honda CM185T:

  • Pitbull front stands will totally work to get the front wheel off the ground, with a #6 pin.
  • Pretty much any paddock stand will work on the rear, if you use the L-shaped brackets they usually come with. You kind of have to finagle it in to place, but it will work.

That was a lot of build up for not much usable info. I feel like I had more fun tips, but I'll impart more soon, probably in shorter form. I'm going to call this a blog for now on account of it's sunday and I just spent all morning fixing this site's server, instead of grumbling about whatever it is I'm fixing on the CM (rewiring, currently). Argh, I still need to go get some bullet terminals.


file under:

#cm185 #birds #spokane #motorcycle