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Ok, so its not a Beemer...

dwestly

New member
We just got our fun bike back from its rebuild/hop-up...not a Beemer, but it turns heads:

1990 GB500, XR600 RFVC Head, R90S fairing up front, Works Air Shocks, steel lines, D.I.D. aluminum rims. Now also sporting a 102.5mm 10.5:1 CR Piston with overbore and hone, all new internals, courtesy of XRs Only, Hesperia, CA.

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Nice. A real collector's item. I can see why it would turn heads.
 
Nice GB! I'd like to pick one up myself, but they don't come up for sale very often.

There is something about the big singles, don't know what it is, but they're huge fun to ride. This is my current 500 thumper...
 

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The GB's Story: We found this bike, pretty much as is, in a vintage bike shop in Richmond VA back in 2001. It was one of two GBs, tucked into the back of a small shop/warehouse, in between a bunch of Nortons, Vincents, etc. My wife fell in love with it. So while she was gone for three weeks on an overseas business trip, I went down and bought the bike for her, and surprised her with it when she returned.
We know some of the corporate Honda folks in Torrance, CA. The story from Honda is that when the GB was released in the U.S. it was overpriced and didn't find an enthusiastic market for retro-cafe style bikes. Basically, they couldn't give them away. They only sold the bike in the States for two years (1989-90), then quit. Most of the bikes ended up on the West Coast doing motorcycle messenger jobs, and were beat to death as a result. This one was bought by an enthusiast, who did the initial mods with the intent to go vintage racing, but never did. That's the reason for the XR600 head (a popular mod at the time, as the 600 head is a direct bolt-on to the GB engine), as well as the other mods. This bike only has 12k original miles and is immaculate. Finding a GB in this condition today is almost impossible.

The reason for the hop-up is she started running rough a couple of months ago, for no apparent reason. I discovered a little piece of the air filter foam missing. It had torn loose and gotten sucked into the air intake. The carb on the GB is an aftermarket, and a real bear to work on, so we took her in to our local BMW shop. They fell all over her.. Anway, after some checking, we realized we also had a bent valve guide in her, so it was time for a rebuild...

For all that, she's not a garage queen. We had her up on the Dragon this past Spring, and she's going to the track in January for a few laps and a photo shoot.

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very cool! i got a chance to ride one a few years ago and at 6'5" i looked like the bear on the circus bike. :laugh

i had seriously considered getting one for a while, but after that ride i realized they were too small for me.
 
The previous owner had painted the cylinder and swingarm red. It looks cool, so we kept it that way...
 
Thanks for the kind comments. We're going to tweak her just a little more, then she's going to be entered into the Vintage Motorcycle Concours in St. Augustine in May 2010.
 

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