Restoration Project – Part 2: Marco Hsu’s CL350

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Here at Rick’s, we love hearing the stories of your restoration projects!  We saw Marco Hsu’s CL350 on Facebook and asked him to share a little about his story with us.  This bike came to Marco from someone’s old motorcycle collection with only 3450 miles on it!  Marco did most of the tear down & build while he was in college living in a rental with no garage.  Talk about a challenging workspace!  He & some of his other gearhead friends worked in a tarp tent in their driveway.

In Hsu’s words, “Eventually, winter came around and I decided it was time to personalize the bike a little bit.  I was lucky enough to have access to a studio and machine shop at school, so I’d work on the bike there at night after classes. My goal was to slim the bike down so it looked a little sleeker, but keep the scrambler look and spirit. I seam welded the stamped areas of the frame that were tacked together from the factory, and boxed in the rear subframe area while adding a shorter tail section with a little up-kick.

A friend who performs headlight retrofits and sometimes makes headlight lenses helped me form a battery tray out of textured ABS plastic.  I wanted a “number plate with headlight” type of look, which quickly evolved into this funky looking headlight plate. It reminds me of a camera, and was part of another good friend of mine’s senior year Industrial Design portfolio. The headlight is a Hella 90mm retrofitted with an HID projector with custom shroud, and produces amazing light output for night riding.”

The rest of the bike is pretty standard according to Hsu.  It has all the original accessories and could pass full inspection if needed.  Once he graduated from college, he actually rocustom_vintage_hondade the little CL350 for the 9+ hour ride from NC to TN through the mountains.  “It performed well, except for a regulator/rectifier failure I experienced just an hour from my new home, says Hsu. “That’s when I upgraded my generic regulator/rectifier and stock charging system to the Rick’s Hot Shot stator and reg/rec upgrade kit.  A little later I finally finished adding tank graphics and some other little upgrades, and had my friend Spencer shoot some nice pictures!”

More more detailed information on Marco’s build, check out his blog at http://ignitesoul.blogspot.com/.  And enjoy the eye candy from Spencer Tull of this beautifully done CL350.