Hi Dude and welcome.
My thoughts on your restoration idea's:
-I've seen these bikes in both gloss black and flat black (without stickers). My personal taste is flat black, with a good clear coat. The reason is the seat looks very flat against a gloss black and therefore a flat looks better
-I've never liked the look of anything but the bikini fairing for a headlight on this bike. Don't get me wrong, I like the street fighter/naked look. But it seems to be best suited for bikes that are already partially naked. There is a great deal of wiring behind that fairing and you'd pretty much have look for some way to hide it all and buy a new instrument panel to boot.
BTW, what chrome are you referring to?
Is it the small amount on the engine? If so, then you can probably find used engine covers on flea-bay in better shape.
Chrome painting is allot of work and it doesn't last very long.
The other option is to paint the entire engine black to look like the 86's engine.
Good inputs to gammer and happycommuter.
Gammer, do you have any pictures of any black 84'-86' cb700's? I'd really like to see what that would look like before parting ways with the OEM paint scheme.
I was looking it over and realized all the "chrome" is actually a polished aluminum with clearcoat. My problem is the clear coat is flaking as happycommuter pointed out. However it has allowed some of the clearcoat to turn a dark color. I think I can strip it off, repolish it and clearcoat it again.
Have you or anyone else messed with removing the valve cover off the engine? Is there enough clearence to remove it with out removing the engine or something else?
The more i've thought about the flat black idea the more I think it might actually look like an unfinished paint job... something more like primer. That is true though that a flat/matte clearcoat will improve the look and durablility of the paint... I think i'm going to ease back a bit on my crazy ideas. I was thinking the same thing about a new instrument cluster if I were to go with the naked bike front end. I'll hold on that one... That conversion alone is around $500+ to do the headlight and instruments.
I've also checked ebay and the pictures are sketchy as to whether the parts are in any better condition then the one's I have. I think I'll hold what I've got and attempt to repolish and clearcoat them. Oh, and chrome polish has little effect on polished aluminum w/ a clearcoat.
And lastly, i think oldbikebarn.com has brand new OEM seats for $160. I saw the link on someones post elsewhere in the forum but I think that would really improve the overall aesthetics compared to the weathered, almost greying seat I have now.
I think just finding parts for this bike is half the fun. Now to figure out whats next!
