Vintage Dirt Bike Q & A

It all started about a year ago. One of my brothers had all of our old family videos transferred to digital. As I was sorting through the clips, I came across one of particular interest. It was me, riding the first motorcycle I ever owned. A 1980 Honda CR80R Elsinore.

I loved that bike. I learned to ride it and it became one of many bikes I have owned over the last 30 years. Nothing in its class was faster. I remember beating the pants off of other bikes on a routine basis. Always fun to have the upper hand.

For some reason, I parted ways with it. Should have kept it, but life changes. After seeing the video, I decided to hunt one down and get it back to the original shape I remembered mine being in. I told a friend at work who really knows motorcycles that I was looking for one. He found one a few months later on craigslist. Thanks Mike! A few hundred dollars later, the rebuild was on.

The other reason I wanted to get and restore one was to have an opportunity to teach my 15 year old son how mechanical things work. Because of my particular job, the cars at the house are always new and need little repair. Nothing ever seems to need much wrenching. I saw this as a perfect opportunity to teach him how to put a nut on a bolt. The experience together has been awesome. The rest of the posts will chronicle our progress.

This being our first attempt at restoring a motorcycle, I made a serious mistake. I didn't take "before" pictures.

The best I have to offer are pictures and narrative of the rebuild. I'll know better next time.

The bike was by no means a basket case. It had been well taken care of, but showed serious signs of wear. The great news was the top end had been recently redone and was still pushing 126 p.s.i. No rebuild necessary. There were also other parts that were in good condition.

The bike was 80% original. That made for a lot less time on ebay and other parts websites.

We completed disassembly in about a month and started our work. I found an original manual and collected old pictures to make sure we stayed as close to the original color schemes as possible.

Here's the first picture of the frame. Amazing how close the thing is to a bicycle in size and weight. It took a decent amount of time in the parts washer to get the years of grease of of it. We sanded and painted it. Considered powdercoat, but opted to keep this more of a true "garage" project.

I saw on a message board somewhere that one of the high temperature spray paints out there was a close match to Tahitian red. We sprayed out a little bit on an extra tank that came with the bike and decided it was actually very close. The color is Ford engine red. We decided to proceed with that as it was readily available at our local paint store.

The next step was to get the engine in the frame. We spent a lot of time painting the engine. We removed the head and cylinder and carefully painted each piece. We did half of the engine case at a time. Removing each bolt and polishing them one by one.

Other than removing the carbon deposits from the piston and head, ther wasn't any reason to break open the case. The bike ran great before we tore it down. We marked everything carefully and removed all the little bits before painting. It was great to put something back together rather than taking things apart.

The swingarm was the piece that saw in the old video that instantly let me know the year of the bike I needed to look for. While the 1981 swingarm looks more modern, I really like the retro look of the 1980 version.

Since it was small enough to fit in the bead blaster at work, it ended up with a nice finish. We cleaned up and polished the bushings, endcaps and main bolt. The chain guide looked new after a few minutes in the parts washer.

We had to start thinking about the black colors as we added the airbox. As we studied old photos it was hard to tell what was matte and what was gloss. We decided to keep most black parts on the lower parts of the bike in matte hi-temp black and use gloss for the more visible upper parts of the bike.

The airbox was the first matte finish. We, like most people with these bikes, are missing the air box cover. If I ever find a nice one, I'll add it. For now, we ordered some black foam from Uni-Filter and made an air cleaner that keeps the missing cover from standing out.

The shocks were a real challange. Compressing the springs to get them apart was tricky. We used an automotive spring compressor that we modified by cutting off a couple of the hooks to grab enough of the spring to compress it. It was sketchy to say the least.

Once compressed, the shocks came apart easily. They were still stiff enough to meet the spec in the owners manual. We spent a few hours with the wire wheel cleaning up the metal and then used a wheel clear paint to cover them.

The springs went in the bead blaster and then were painted.

Re-compressing and assembling left a few nicks in the paint that we touched up later. They really came out great.

Like others, once the triple tree was removed, we were searching around on the floor for bearings. We painted it with gloss black, repacked, and spent some time getting the torque right so the steering movement wouldn't bind.

The front shocks had to be re-done internally. Once past that hurdle, we spent a bunch of time on the wire wheel and then sprayed them with wheel clear to preserve the finish,

The original handlebars were bent. We tried to straightent them on a press at work but only made them worse. A "reproduction" set wasn't even close when it arrived. We eventually found a straight set on ebay. We refinished them in gloss black also.

The carb was next. Nothing special here. Just a quick rebuild and re-install. I still need to replace the varnished vent tube.

The expansion chamber had a few dings we worked out with a torch and pick. It is by no means perfect, but the matte black paint hides a lot. the heat guard was painted gloss for a little contrast.

The exhaust mounts were torn pretty badly. Some hi temp epoxy put them back together. We'll see if it holds.

very nice rebuild.
but if you want it original the engine has to be in satin red and the most of the black parts were satin too.

_________________
80 CR250Ra
80 CR250Ra
78 CR250R
80 CR80
82 Bultaco Sherpa 340
78 Bultaco Pursang 250 MK12
76 Bultaco Frontera 370 MK10
76 Bultaco Alpina 250
73 Bultaco Lobito 125 MK6
76 Suzuki RM125A
90 Kawasaki KX250

Thanks b-joe. We are certainly learning as we go. I appreciate any information that comes our way.

We got a set of DC replacement plastics and added the front and rear fender.

The exhaust was pretty beat up near the back so we straightened it out and painted it black with the same high temp paint.

We started out thinking we were just going to buy hardware new as much as possible. We quickly learned how much time that takes and how much it costs and decided to brush up our wire wheel/polisher skills.

The rear wheel was completely disassembled. We delaced the spokes and replaced a couple of missing ones with a set from e-bay. We had to go that direction after finding that Buchanan Spoke doesn't make replacements for this small of a gauge. Every single spoke was individually polished. We cleaned up the wheel with steel wool and polish. All the rust finally gave way. Re-lacing spokes was a learning experience. We had taken good video of how the spokes were laced but didn't realize how critical the order of re-lacing them was. We know now.

We replaced the brakes and painted the hub flat black. The brake stay on the opposite side was also painted flat black. The brake lever was polished along with the hardware and all cotter pins replaced.

We had to improvise on the bushing holding the lower chain guide. I'm not sure what the original metal was but the bushing we found that fit is well lubricated.

The chain was completely replaced because of severe rust.

The left crankcase cover and gasket were reused. I'm not happy with the condition of the cover. If I ever find a NOS part I'll buy it and swap out. The plastic cover has too many scratches for our liking. Paint helped, but I want to find a better solution