The Rear Wheel

        Ok, So the rear wheel is finally done. It was somewhat more complicated than it needed to be, and that is entirely my fault. The original rear wheel that came on the bike was 16 inches in diameter. This is not an uncommon size for a street bike, however I was pretty determined from the get-go that this bike was going to sport some knobby tires. After looking at the selection online, I realized that very few offroad tires were offered in a 16inch rim option. Once you got to 17inch and above, a world of options opened up to you, but 16 was basically a nonstarter. So I determined to put a 17 inch wheel on the bike. Well, the CX500 has a fairly unique rear wheel, It has fairly distinctive comstar rims and spokes, and is attached to a very proprietary shaft drive/hub assembly. So after alittle research, i discovered that it was possible to swap the rim and spokes from a 1980 Honda GL1100 directly onto the existing hub, and end up with a perfectly matching, 17inch, comstar rear wheel.
   
     So i ordered a GL1100 wheel off of ebay. It arrived, it was ugly, I had to cut the tire off with a sawzall (massive pain in the ass). The bolts that held everything together were some weird security head, specifically designed to prevent the kind of behavior I was engaging in. Literally every single spoke is engraved with the words "do not disassemble" . Awesome. Lacking an appropriate wrench, I cut through the center of the bolt and nut on the backside, the two halves fell away, and I was able to easily pop the bolt through the backside. The rivets holding the spokes to the rim were pretty straight forward, Center punch, drill, hammer. Eventually everything was disassembled, cleaned, sanded, another pisspoor paint job was applied, and the wheel was reassembled. with new stainless hardware, nylock nuts, and shitloads of red loctite. I stopped short of throwing a spot weld on each nut, but if anything loosens up, that is the next step. Thing looks pretty straight, I cant really tell, Tire is alittle small presently but I can step that up later. One step closer to a real live motorcycle. Next project, weld seat loop on the rear and paint the engine.