Retro Rebuild: '85 Honda CR500 David Bailey USGP Replica

hey everybody it's ping with vital mx and uh we've got a really cool project today we're here at glen helen riding a 1985 500 which our buddy john here from mullet moto racing put together we'll let him uh we'll get into this whole story of where he got it and and why it looks the way it does but it's meant to look like the 1986 factory cr500 at david bailey road at the u.s gp at carlsbad in 86. john first of all thanks for letting us ride this thing and do this video i i hope that we do it justice because i know you got a whole lot of blood sweat and tears and cash into this thing so tell us tell us the story about where you got it and what what brought this on yeah so i've been doing the vintage thing for quite a while and uh i picked this thing up probably 10 years ago or something uh kind of before anybody wanted anything to do with these old things so i picked it up for 600 bucks with a bunch of spare parts that i've used on other bikes it was like deal of century kind of thing and anyways i uh swapped out the forks and put cartridge forks on it because 85 still have the damper rods uh you know cleaned some stuff up and did the suspension and then i raced it for a while and i was just sort of sitting and i you know it's like well maybe i'll get to restoring it and make it really clean at some point and wasn't sure i thought about selling it and then i had a bike on display at the hopetown reunion a couple years ago and david bailey saw it and you know boom that was like the inspiration right there i was talking with them and it's like hey man you know i want to do one of your bikes and he immediately was like yeah 86 cr500 from carlsbad you know it's like okay boom so that like kind of set the stage for the build you know it's an 85 not an 86 but 85 and 86 are really similar bikes they got the big tank they both have the short rod motor that was only a two-year thing and whatever so i ran with it because i wasn't going to go buy an 86 just for that purpose when i had this one the big deal with the 86 uh you know factory bikes was that the production bike had a rear drum and the factory race bikes they'd done a rear disc conversion and so i thought dude if i'm going to do this i want to do it right and so i mean you can see we did the whole swap out with the rear disc thing you know i was kind of like you know even if it doesn't freaking work very good it looks cool it's gonna look you know what i mean so like whatever so yeah so the rear disc conversion was a big deal the uh the motor i thought you know obviously you can't build a real factory motor but let's make i call i call them poor man's works motors so it's got a balanced crankshaft that was done tom morgan it's ported by tom morgan it runs on race gas you'd cut the head for for uh race gas and uh you know i mean it sounds cool and you know and obviously like framed the whole thing uh powder coated everything uh and just like small details you know the silencer i got on ebay it was all beat up but it's an oem silencer which are really hard to find so i had a dent shop push the dents out and then i cleaned it up sent it to get anodized same with the swing arm got all the mods for the rear disc and then i sanded down with a palm sander to get every single nick and scratch out and then i send that out to get re-anodized and so it's just like those kind of details it takes time and money uh but it's a passion and i i love it you know what i mean well and the look is is phenomenal you know david bailey came out today uh and just to watch and be a part of it a little bit and and check it out and he's he even said the sticker placement the exact same stickers he had on his race bike the gold bars this this crossbar pad which is hilarious because this was when i started an 84 85 this is what i was using so a lot of this stuff brings back memories for me you know and and uh i i just you look at it like david said from 20 feet back you'd be really hard-pressed unless you were a factory on a mechanic to know which was which so you did a great job sure yeah thank you yeah and you know a huge shout out to david bailey right because i mean it just if you're into building this stuff like i am this is like the ultimate right like i talked to him i communicated with him he sent me photos i would find parts and then i would send it to him like hey man is this the right stuff and he would respond with all this cool information you know i mean so i wasn't actually going to plan to ever ride this thing and then the opportunity came out to have david here and watch and it's like i mean what a what a dream right yeah yeah and you got it you got him to sign it here after today it's going up on a on the wall what was the toughest thing to find or get on this thing well the rear disc conversion thing wasn't necessarily finding parts so much as just getting the fab work done and coming up with the concept of how i was gonna do it um the engine covers because they're factory replica engine covers those are pretty hard to find um i was able to find a guy in italy that had a set so that you know it's that's the whole thing like you start doing these things in your ebay search button you got to click worldwide because the parts availability for this 80s stuff is starting to get bad everywhere you know and uh so it's like yeah you're getting parts from germany and italy and great britain and whatever and uh you know it's a lot of work but you know to me it's worth it and i love it it's fun well i can tell you that on the track uh i was terrified to go out on this thing 500s are a little bit sketchy uh in my experience but when i got out of the track this thing was surprisingly comfortable and david even said that he goes it's actually really playful because you forget you're on a 500 it just feels like a fast 250. and that was that was true in a lot of a lot of ways um it didn't feel like this big heavy monster that was about to spit me off it's it's tractable it was a lot of fun that the tone of it is so low and throaty i mean you feel it almost like a dragster the suspension is you know for the era it's pretty good if you were on a beat up national track it would be tough and i told david i i'm blown away that they were riding these things at carlsbad at the speeds they were knowing that track that hard chop and you're how fast you're going i'm glad i was not around riding big bikes in that era but lots of power obviously there's only a few spots here where i could really open it up and get on it but my biggest thing was just how tractable it was it didn't feel too much different than a 450 you come out of a turn in second or third and you just modulated everything with the throttle and it would hook up and it was a lot of fun to ride great front brake now i know you did a little trick on this guy this is a 2000 era yeah front brake system so the front brake worked great uh rear brake we had a little bubble so we're kind of getting some fade here and there but um easy fix uh but they're just the overall comfort of the bike other than feeling a little fat towards the back for a short guy like me it would kind of if i got kicked a little bit it felt really wide but what did you think of that tank do you have a big tank in the front no issues no issues and when i looked at it and david said the same thing he goes i know it looks like this big massive bulgy bulgy off-road tank he goes but you don't notice it when you're riding and david was telling us stories he used to go back at uh in lake sugar tree in virginia and he'd take this thing trail riding he'd ride a supercross track on it he just really rode this bike a lot the 86 production model and i can see why it's really a lot of fun i will say these foot pegs are gnarly they're so skinny in fact when i mentioned it to david i'm like did you race with these he goes well he goes i i extended mine about 10 mil a little bit further out and then he goes i brought him back he goes that just gave me more room because i had bigger feet to like get the controls and stuff but he nailed it when he said it's like like standing on two chopsticks but we wanted it to be authentic and it is just a super fun bike to ride and to have one of my childhood heroes and the guy who i think is is really a national treasure for our sport in terms of history and his ability to recall things and discuss things and talk about them to have david sitting there on the sidelines watching it's pretty damn cool it's unreal dude i sat right next to him the whole time and it's it's dream come true it's unreal uh one thing i want to throw out is if you did not catch our video with david it was a sit down in the museum here at glen hill and just talking about this bike the 1986 race bike of his from factory honda the usgp that he raced uh that bike and that's what this is modeled after there's a lot of chat about just a chat about that stuff so if you missed that go back and watch a lot of cool information there well i want to thank john and uh again i i really appreciate him letting us ride this thing thank you guys for watching uh we got a lot more cool stuff coming if you missed we also did a cr 125 of john's a couple months back if you if you haven't seen that go check that out too because that was pretty cool and we've got one more neat steve lamson project that hopefully we're going to get steve out too so keep an eye out for that as well thank you guys for watching see you down the road you

Channel: Vital MX

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Id: wKcLf54uQU8

Length: 9min 41sec (581 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 11 2021