Spring 2013 Update -

Quick snapshot of the new tank on my also 

new(ish) pool table. For anyone that doesn't

know me in person, I'm a big (wholly untalented) 

pool junkie.

SO CLOSE!

The weather has been warming up, and I'm looking to taking the Magna out for a spin again. Right now, I'm working on getting it to start up after a cold winter. The battery went bad after my ex-roomate borrowed my charger and never put it back on. It's my fault for not making sure she did.  So the season started off with a new battery. I was still having starting trouble, so I dug in some more and found that the battery cables were bad. After replacing them, it's still giving me trouble. Turns out the plugs are fouled too. So I picked up some new plugs and I'm waiting to get some time to install them and try again. I also still need to fix the oil leak in the drive shaft. Ah, the joys of maintenance. But soon, hopefully very soon, I will be feeling the spring air again.

Over the winter, I picked up a new (to me) tank. The dent in the other one was too large to fix, so I picked up this one cheap on eBay. It does still have a small dent in it, but I should be able to fill this one in. I'll have to start by sanding down the lime green paint though.  I'm probably not going to worry too much about it this season with so much going on, but it should make a good fall/winter project to mount the new tank and paint the bike.  I'm thinking of going for a black bike with a white stripe down the center. We'll see.

1984 Honda Magna

I haven't posted to the eclipse build in quite some time. I've been a bit distracted from the project for a while. I've been sorting through some personal issues, but I've also been putting some attention into another project, my very first street bike. I sold my 2000 Kawasaki kx80 dirtbike last summer and in early September, I picked up a 1984 Honda Magna, a 750 cc street bike.

Here is the bike as I got it on day one. It runs great, but it does have a dent in the side of the tank, presumably from a previous owner laying it over. It also has some oil leaks that I will need to address this winter. For now, I'm just keeping oil in it to milk what I can out of this Indian Summer we've been enjoying in Indiana the last few weeks.

True to who I am, I wasn't able to leave well enough alone and started making minor mods as money has allowed. I had the bike home for a grand total of 12 hours before making a set of custom brackets to remove the sissy bar on the back. Here it is afterward.

After riding the bike a few times, it became apparent that it's made for someone just a bit shorter than me. The riding position keeps my legs a little too high and it becomes uncomfortable to ride after more than 30 or 40 minutes. I managed to add a little bit of extra comfort by lowering the highway pegs a few inches. Eventually, I would like to upgrade to some offset ones to add a little more comfort on long rides.  I also really disliked the hand grips on the bike as they were too big to really get my hands around. A quick stop on ebay yielded a nice $8 solution.  With the new grips, I found the bike to be more comfortable, but the excessive pull back on the handlebars did hurt my wrists on longer rides. I went to superbikes.com and found a set of wide magna style handlebars for $35 shipped to my door that solved the problem and also gave me more leverage leaning in turns, making the bike not only more ergonomical, but easier to handle as well.  With just $43 worth of mods in the bike so far (I had the aluminum for the licence plate brackets laying around from the eclipse project), it already feels like a completely different bike!

Here are some pics of the bike as it sits now. You can see in the pics that there is also less rise in the new handlebars, which I think puts my arms in a more comfortable position when riding.

My plans for the future are to change the seat cover, or possible the whole seat if I can find an alternative that would push me back slightly on the bike to give me more leg room. What do you think? What mods would you do to the bike?