Unless you start with a pile of tubing, all-new parts and a beautiful mind, your average garage-built motorcycle comes together one piece at a time?and it?s not all glamorous. We?re zeroing in on our vision of a functional hoonmobile, but our Honda CB550F Tracker has some loose ends to address in form and function before it finds its stride.
Today’s program is essentially five minutes of fame for the nitty-gritty work we generally overlook in the final product. Tedious, but essential in our revival, our work in this segment includes squaring away our problematic front fender, finalizing the fit of our aftermarket seat, some detabbing and replacing our wheel bearings with basic tools.
Solving the Fender Dilemma If you?ve been following along with our CB550F Tracker project, you know the front fender was the single biggest issue I had with the way this bike was progressing. Our stock tin fender was pitted and dented, and the radius did not play well with our larger Bridgestone Battlax AX41 rubber.

That said, we needed some sort of fender, not only for functionality to appease the comments section, but also because the bike needed some visual weight out front. We mocked up several different tin units, plastic dirt bike fenders and even played around with the idea of a fork brace before we committed to modifying our beat-up stocker.
I st...