This summer I carried my 35mm Pentax camera for the occassional shot. I mainly shoot digital but appreciate the look and feel of film in certain situations. I’ve been really slow with finishing rolls so I actually only shot a hand full. I’ve gotten some developed recently and the pictures are a random sampling of different cycles, friends, and traveling from this past summer. These are from the first roll:

(Any film person know where to get Seattle Film Works rolls developed?)

Northern PA. I had just got my 550 on the road (still had the stock bars on it) that morning and took off with Ed for some renegade camping.

Directions to Aaron’s wedding in Ohio taped to my tank. I had some cycle trouble the day the crew left Philly so I spent the night in the shop getting it taken care of and took off the next day. 500+ miles in 2 days with my first night of solo renegade camping.

Ryan and Dana.

Ricky livin’ free.

-Adam

Last week I took a trip out to Chicago to visit my good friend Ryan. We’ve rode bmx for years and on one of our last bmx adventures around the southwest riding some of the best cement parks (chandler park, Phoenix AZ) I got him psyched on finding an old Honda …

A few months later he found a 1971 CB500 in decent condition.

Luckily Ryan has a big 2 car garage which made it easy to get some work done on one of the rainy days.

We spent a solid day giving the bike a full tune up. Cam chain, valve clearance, points, timing, carb clean, and a general cleaning. The head gasket was leaking slightly so we decided to re-torqued the head by cracking each bolt and then torquing it to the highest spec (~18ft lbs). Heard some mixed feeling on this but thought it was worth a try.

I traveled out to Chicago with my lady who was very patient with the wrenching so once we got it fired up we took the cycle out all around the city.

We hit up a bunch of places including Intelligensia coffee house which is a well known spot. They individually brew each cup of coffee. It was awesome.

We parked next to a burly CB750 while eating lunch at the Chicago Diner. Best seitan ruben sandwhich I’ve ever had.

Adam

My 500 has been running pretty solid, but over the last few weeks I’ve been fine tuning it. I pulled the carbs last week and did a bench sync, which helped a lot. This morning I did a full tune up and then decided to take her out for a ride. I was on my way towards the ocean (I’m in NYC for those of you that don’t know), when I saw an entrance to a park and an access road I have never been on before, so I made the impulse decided to check it out.

My god. An abandoned airfield! Holy shit! Other then a few fisherman and some other motorcyclist I had the place to myself. What a great place to test out the cb500 full throttle (which I haven’t gotten to do yet). After taking some passes to make sure there weren’t any crazy bumps, I went for it, and I’m happy to say the 500 didn’t bog at all and had no problem hitting 100+

What a great ending to the weekend.

- Andrew

(Click for Color)

Well guys, we’ve had all winter to get something done, except for Ed who gets to enjoy summer back to back to back. The warm weather signals us to make those final adjustments and go for a test ride.

Stopped by Brian’s house Saturday for some cold beers and a lesson on the hybrid tacos of Southern Texas. Brian was dusting off the ol’ 63 Pan and rewiring the brake switch. Needless to say, we wrapped up there, bought a case of Genesse and ate tacos for dinner.

After a day of piecing the 500/4 motor together, a few of us arrived just in time to watch Jason McElroy fuel up his freshly built BSA and make a couple dozen flybys.

When Erik Omland’s not busting up hipster fights at the Barbary, he’s wrenching right next door to Jason’s shop. He’s been working on this local Tiger110 that’s in beautiful condition.

End of the weekend and I have a near finished motor and freshly painted helmet. Starting ‘er up tonight.

As much as I fucking hate Winter, if it didn’t keep me off the bike as much as it did, I’d never get any work done.
-Devyn

My cb500 is almost 100% finished up. I got my new set of Avon road runners on the other day, man what a difference new tires make!

I was still having issues with my clutch, it felt like shit, and it turns out my clutch push rod was broken. The clutch adjuster was also cracked. I got a new OEM clutch adjuster from bikebandit.com

CB500 clutch push rods are very very very hard to find on Ebay, but knowing honda double overs a lot of their parts, I figured another model must fit. It took a TON of googling but I found out that the cb500 uses the same clutch push rod as the cb450/cl450/cb500t, which made it much easier to find one ($20 on ebay). For future reference here is the part number – 22850-323-000

I had to take off the right side cover and then the clutch basket (the 4 bolts shown above) to get the broken push rod out, but it gave me a good excuse to change the oil and oil filter. I also put in a new air element. Man the bike is feeling awesome! So I rode it to the beach!

-Andrew