EDie, the Black Rat - 1994 Honda CB 500:

EDie had obviously had a hard life. Few of her body panels matched, her indicators were held on with chopsticks (and contained rocks!) and she had clearly not always been fastidiously cared for. Despite this, she was straight, had no significant rust and her engine and gearbox were sound. She was the perfect bike for our first modification and restoration effort.

We divvied up roles:

Chief Engineer - Big Mac,

Chief Designer - Dr Tigger,

Mechanic and Design Consultant - Hunt.

This promptly led to disagreement but each role's Chief had final say so the plan was for a bare metal total rebuild, converting EDie into a cafe racer rat look style bike.

The first job, undertaken in the Autumn of 2016, was the strip down. After that we took the bike apart:

Having taken her pretty much to pieces, we got down to the horrid job of cleaning, paint removing, refurbishing the leaky forks, repainting the frame and making a new back end. We should have powder coated the frame; we didn't.

After a very long winter slump waiting for the welding, we finally got started on the rebuild; going for the new back end electrics first. This was quite nerve-racking because the wiring loom had been hanging over a pushbike for the winter and we kept miswiring things. First attempt had left and right indicators flashing at the same time or not at all! Not entirely our fault; the indicator manufacturer had used red for earth and black for positive!!

These were basic electrics but we still managed a potential MOT fail; the new (smaller) indicators contained 10w bulbs rather than the original 21w bulbs so they flash twice as fast. In the end we had to buy new front indicators with heavier load bulbs to slow the flashing to the 60-120 per minute required. After these basic electrics we got on to the bigger things like wheels, suspension, engine, fuel system, exhaust system and the cooling system. Not that much really. It was amazing the pace with which EDie started to come together after a winter in boxes on a garage floor.

After all this hard but wonderfully enjoyable work one of the many moments of truth was upon us. Restarting the engine after it being on Tigger's workbench for 6 months.

BTW the smoke was the exhaust wrap drying out and curing. What a great noise from pop pop to power.

With a seemingly functional engine in situ we quickly noticed no radiator fan activation and no temperature reading on the gauge. Some old school investigations showed a faulty fan switch sensor, a possibly faulty temperature sensor and a seemingly functional thermostat valve.

So, after ordering the new sensors, we very unexpectedly found ourselves deep in stand issues. The side stand wasn't from a CB500 and was back to front and the centre stand now badly fouled the chain. The two solutions either end of the engineering spectrum; finesse and sledgehammer.

Our improptu 'testing' fuel tank was the definition of Heath Robinson.

Having vowed to do nothing cosmetic until EDie was a proven runner one day's boredom led to engine enamel being thrown over everything. Pretty ratty looking was all in the brief!

Then, at last, the day came for us to give EDie her first test ride. We did this on a private road for obvious reasons. It had to be a brief run as the cooling system spares were still to arrive.

The test ride was a great success but there were still the cooling system issues. Later that week the fan switch arrived along with a new temperature sensor. Despite the new parts nothing worked still until we finally realised she just wasn't getting that hot so we left her running and finally, after 15 minutes, the cooling system sparked into life!

The remaining job was created by the test ride. We were so desperate to do the test ride we didn't let the paint harden for long enough so Rob's crotch badly marked the tank. We reconsidered all options again but still went for black. The chopstick that was holding up the front indicators when we got EDie has been mounted under the seat for posterity.

The next hurdle was EDie's MOT on 27th May, 2017. BigMac & Tigger were like men waiting outside a delivery room with anxiety. Despite the tester's wife being confused by our LED back lights and having to pay £1 for a number plate reflector, which we had completely overlooked, she passed with no advisories. NO ADVISORIES!!!

BigMac's new GoPro recorded the run back from the MOT centre. That is some pretty awesome sound but we've turned our 500 into a 125 by fitting too big an exhaust so depriving EDie of the back pressure she needs. Ooops, going to need a new one! She topped out at around 60mph.

Did we mention NO MOT ADVISORIES? Ha ha ha!!! We're chuffed with this.

When we got back we unexpectedly had no MOT highlighted jobs to do so we got on with the wheel's refurb.

The new exhaust, with baffle located, required us to manufacture a second new bracket. We decided to wrap right up to the can this time. She sounds great and now starts and idles without having to keep the revs up manually.

So after being VERY chuffed with ourselves we hand another head scratch after a disappointing test run. This cerebral fidgitry led to inspiration and a quick spark check proved us right; we'de been running on one cylinder! MUPPETS!!! We tracked this down to one spark plug cap and so we replaced both and the HT leads. This fault had developed spontaneously during the rebuild. After correcting our numbskullery we decided to get the carbs ultrasonically cleaned and refurbed. By then EDie was finally finished and sounded truely AMAZING! Time for her final set of photos and videos.

We think EDie was awesome but we know we can do even better next time.