Project 1970 Honda CB350 — Part III

By Richard Backus
Published on December 10, 2015
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by Richard Backus
Our project Honda CB350's finished frame.

The is the third in a series on our 1970 Honda CB350 build project. Read Part I and Part II for earlier stages of the project, and Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII and Part VIII for the later installments. You can also watch video of our Honda running for the first time.

We’ve been pretty satisfied with the rate of progress on our project 1970 Honda CB350. It hasn’t been too hard squeezing the tear-down work in between our “real” work, and things were going really well until — you knew this was coming — we got hit by the unexpected: And it wasn’t a problem with the bike.

The unexpected problem had nothing to do with our CB350, although, somewhat ironically, it did involve a Honda; just not this one. A few weeks after shipping the last issue, I was kickstarting my 1966 Honda CA95 when the kickstarter stopped, but my leg kept going. The resulting torn Achilles’ tendon, followed by surgery, took me out of commission for a few weeks. I’m starting to get back up to speed, but the injury had a big impact on our progress. Tech Q & A man Keith Fellenstein, editor Landon Hall and myself have been knocking this out in our free time: Knock any one of us out and things slow down.

But it’s not all bad news, because we have managed to take care of a few important bits, some of them even with yours truly on crutches.

What’s happened

The most visible progress is the frame, which we carted off to Stuart Armstrong at Custom Coatings & Metal for media blasting and powder coating. As we’ve come to expect from Stuart, the frame, swingarm and various other metal bits we gave him came back looking so good, it’s hard to believe they’re the same parts we dropped off.

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