Any clown with an adjustable wrench can take a bike apart (the term basketcase exists for a reason), and if you go in without a plan, that’s exactly how the next owner will take delivery of your abandoned dream—in boxes. But you do have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, and for our beloved $400 CB550F, we need to tear the bike down to its bare bones to see what we’re working with. And that means the custom diamond-stitch saddle, cruiser bars, cushy footpegs and other fragments from its past life have got to go.
While our CB will eventually be torn all the way down, that’s not my goal just yet. Instead, I want to declutter the bike as much as possible, reducing it to its core components.…