El Granto

On June 27th 2008 I spent what little savings I had at the time on something that I had drempt about since I was a small boy. I bought my first motorcycle.

I found her on craigslist and she was exactly what I wanted, a red 1973 CB360T. She was in decent shape considering she was 35 years-old at the time and she had just a few scratches and just two minor dents on her tank. She came with only the right side original red side-cover but included an extra tank and a matching extra (right side again) side-cover. She has minimal rusting of the headers and very little rust at all on her frame. Most of the chrome is pitted though and will need to be replaced eventually. I call her… Penelope. (Click the pics to enlarge)

She came with an inspection from a shop in Toronto in the area of the beaches (I’ll leave their name out of this post) and said that all that was required was a new battery and a front tire. Not living in the beaches and not wanting to ride the bike across town illegally or get it towed that far I decided to take the bike to a shop closer to my work and home for an inspection. I’m so glad I did this as within minutes Tom at Cyclewerx had pointed out a major safety concern in the fact that the throttle cables were incredibly sticky and needed replacing. Tom ordered in the new tire I needed and I acquired the push and pull cables online. Tom installed them and I was ready to go!

One thing that’s great about old bikes is you never really know what’s going to happen next with them.

A week later I was riding home from work and took a small detour in order to get some more riding time in when the poor girl just stopped firing. Luckily I happened to be right next to a friends house and was able to push it in to his driveway before nightfall. After a bunch of hair pulling and waiting for morning light it turned out to be a lose wire from the stator and I was able to ride her home the next day.

One thing I love about my bike is there’s always something that I can do. I’m slowly trying to give it the cafe racer treatment. I’m always looking for the next part. I’ve put quite some time in to it and I’ve learned a lot from working with it either trying to update, upgrade, or just plain FIX it.

This work includes but is not limited to:

• Clubman handlebars add a more aggressive riding stance
• New solid state signal blinker to enable the use of LED and low draw blinkers
• Stubby turn signals for the front (and soon the back I think)
• New aftermarket stator which improved power generation by over 33%. This was a necessity as the old one was grounded out and wasn’t producing enough power to keep my battery charged unless I was at high RPM’s (a very difficult thing to do in the city)
• New combination regulator/rectifier also helping in electrical power production
• New clutch cable because my old one snapped at Yonge and Bloor one night a few weeks ago

I have high hopes for this bike and I don’t expect to sell it. If I get another bike (which I would like to someday) it will simply become my project bike. One thing that is definitely standing in the way of my progress is the lack of a garage for me to work in. This winter I plan to find a couple of left hand side covers and acquire some new mufflers for it as right now I’m currently running a stock CB360t muffler on the left side and a muffler from a CB350 on the right side because the original had a hole the size of my fist in it and was causing all sorts of issues with the way the bike was running. I’d also like to get a seat with a cowl made up to finish off the streamlined look. But that might have to wait till I get another bike as my girlfriend really likes to ride on the back.