Its big, not a lot of power, and suffering from years of neglect. Original parts are hard to find but those water cooled cylinder heads sticking out the sided should keep my old knees warm this fall.

With the sale of the wife's Rebel, she is now coveting Rosebud so it's time to pull the trigger on the CX500 project. The engine runs fine and has good compression so this weekend "Gordy" is rolling on to the stand to begin the resurrection. At first I will settle for a full service and lube everything, carb rebuild and make sure there's no deadly rust areas and then ride him around for a while this fall.

If he's as good of a commuter bike as I hope then it's back into the garage for the winter for a full tear down and restoration. Has a windjammer fairing, (with a brand new windshield in a box) and a sissy bar and luggage rack. Should be a fun project and a useful bike.

Sounds about like my 1980 Suzuki GS550E (Lola) project (from before I got my Vulcan 500 Hephaestus). When I bought it off a work friend, it turned over, but didn't run. He had been working on it, but had some BMW projects that kept calling his attention. Well it got running, and I loved it for a daily commuter, but yea weight to power ratio was a little off with how heavy it was.

Later that year when I got Hephaestus, and Lola travelled to be stored at my workshop. I've been needing to pull her back out and do a full restoration, but just haven't had the time. Of course, having Hephaestus down from my wreck made me wish I had spent some more time working on Lola so that I wouldn't be stuck in a cage.

At least I'm finally at the point where all my parts are here for Hephaestus' front-end rebuild, so I can get back out on the road, sooner rather than later.


Best of luck on your build! Looking forward to progress updates and photos!

So this weekend I built a workstand and got "Gordy" up so I can start working on him.


We'll see how this gets on, gotta have the wife's side of the garage empty by the first snowfall. I started a resurrection thread on the CX500 Forum and will be keeping that updated but I will keep you all posted on how it comes out.

I've a few pop up cheap around here on craigslist. I almost would have bought one but I already have too much on my plate. I'm curious what kind of fuel economy they get.