Honda FT500 By Sideburn

Honda FT500 By Sideburn

Words by Gary Inman photography by Paul Bryant. There’s a phrase very popular in England “You can’t polish a turd”. But taking on their first project bike Sideburn magazine tried.

The starting point was a £370 (600) Honda FT500C and the magazine didn’t want to spend a lot on it. Luckily they had Carl of CFM in Lincolnshire England on their side. He’s a local one-man do-it-all bike builder/fabricator and he sorted the bike out.

One of the biggest jobs was removing the FT500 sub-frame and replacing it with raised seat rails. This was done to make the new tank sit parallel and look good with the seat. The tank? It’s from a 1970s Garelli sport moped while the seat is a repro Norton race unit with a Steve Adams seat pad. The distinctive paint based on an optician’s colour blindness test was laid on by British cross-genre artist Death Spray Custom.

The front forks were replaced with Yamaha TDR250 legs with the stock triple clamps bored out to accept them. The puny and worn-out front brake was ditched for a Yamaha R6 caliper and custom-made EBC disc while the rear is another EBC disc with a standard caliper. Sideburn went to the bother of having one-off discs made to avoid caliper adapter plates—always ugly and best avoided. The rear shocks are British-made Hagon Nitros.

There are dozens of tasty little details. The footpegs are KTM beartraps while the rear master cylinder is Yamaha YZ450. The stock headlight is on a cut-and-shut standard bracket; the front master cylinder is from a Honda CFR450 and the switches have all been moved to the headlight shell.

Want to know more? Grab yourself a copy of Sideburn #6.

With thanks to Gary Inman of Sideburn Magazine and Paul Bryant of Kinetic Images.

Source: Bike Exif