Phour days to phantastic - it's all the little things (day 4)

There's this saying that the last 20 percent of a project take up at least 80 percenty of the time. Well, it wasn't the case here to be honest. The lil' CX still had a few fleas, of which the most worrying one was the state of the wiring as it used to be a police bike back in the 80ies, so it had a lot of extra equipment on it.

But first things first: the original petcock has officially had it and a new one had to be installed.
(And yes, this is the stock police tank. Looks like they simply repainted the bikes at the importer. The headlight-cowl has got some blue underneath the white paint.)

After the first testride I found out that the forks were a bit twisted, but that was sorted rather quickly and unlike my first assumption the frame appears to be pretty straight for a 70ies bike.

Time to dig into the electrics - someone cut the wires going to the front indicators, which is a pretty good reason for them not to work. 

The most tricky part of all was to work out, why the tail-light worked just fine, but the headlight didn't. Turns out, the high-beam switch was corroded and cut all the electricity to the headlight bulb.

Now this is officially not pretty, but a fuel-filter does wonders in keeping the dirt out of the carbs and preventing carbs from overflowing. (We – as in my dad and I – rinsed the tank multiple times, but there's still some fine rust-debris in there, so over the course of the next three or four fills this will probably mostly come out.)

And there you have it: a nice little CX500, which still isn't pretty, but everything works and it will make a perfect little everyday runaround bike. Even the charging system works just fine, with the reg/rect shutting off. (That being said, the charging system is VERY stout as even with lights on at idle it can charge the battery. Something I am not sure any of my bikes can do...)

Really curious, what my dad will have to say about it. It's a lot more nimble than I would have thought. Carbs may still need some tweaking, but then again it also was very low on petrol and not fully warmed up. Valves might need some attention too as they made some tickering noises, but then again heaps better than nothing to hear at all. All in all, I am quite chuffed with the little bike and the work we put into it.