My best friend Marc introduced me into motorcycles, he started on a Honda 50cc trail bike,which my brother KILLED (He was gunning it around a corner and hit a car that had just stopped for a stop sign). Then he got a 250cc dirt bike, then came the Honda cr80. He sold those and got a Yamaha 250 exciter, and then a Yamaha ysr80, later a 78 Yamaha XS 750 which was fast, but he sold it because he couldn't afford insurance on it. He now has a 79 Honda CX500

Here is an old picture of me on my uncle's bike, also a CX500 Custom
Marc has been customizing his CX500 for 2yrs, it is now Yellow instead of the shitty red paint job it had when he got it. It is a decent standard bike, half cruiser half sporty. On the cruiser side it doesn't like fast corners, and on the sport bike side we (2 people) have gone 200Km/h(odometer reading at the 10K rpm redline) on it racing my friend Nelson's CRX, and it easily takes on mustangs and other V8s.

Marc and my brother stripped the bike last winter and labelled everything then the frame, radiator grill, tank and covers and back fender were painted Lotus yellow. We put sport bike type handle bars on it! When we tried to assemble it we came across some problems. We were forced to back track because we had left some pieces out; we should have been following the manual. One of those pieces was the radiator fan restraint piece (I dunno da name!), which forced us to take out the rad and put it in (bitch of a job!). Then it was a piece that goes under the battery, we had to bend it slightly to get it in, or we would have had to take out the air box, undo a whole bunch of wiring, and take out the back mud guard.

Then we had some problems getting to run, after we got a new ignition unit there was no power comming out of the old one because we busted some terminal on it(i don't know how). Somehow the CDI unit got screwed, we had to put in a new one ($350 last one in stock,a deal from 500$ if we had to order it) kill switch is now working after we found a bad ground on the new handle bars. New clutch was put in place. Still trying to fix bad ground on battery but otherwise it runs.

This past summer we have had a lot of wiring problems, we found out the previous owner screwed around with the ignition wiring. That's why when we replaced it, the aftermarket ingnition wouldn't work. It busted fuses left, right and centre! my friend Marc sorted out the wiring, and that problem has finally been fixed (keep your fingers crossed!). The bike had another minor (yeah rite) problem, the engine seized while my friend was driving (NOT FUN!) It was mostly his fault, he felt the bike loose power and didn't bother stopping because "he was almost home"; (I guess the bike couldn't wait that long.) So the wheel locked up, then came the wild fishtails, he somehow managed to save it from the ground, but the engine was fried. We found out later there was no oil in it, he says he had checked not long ago. Go figure! Anyway we looked around and found a wicked engine with 16K on it from a GL500. It feels a lot more powerful and runs smoother than the other did with 46K on it. Then again the other engine had been through some abuse including a 9 hour walk* home from sauble beach witch usually takes 2hrs going 140-160km/h *(start it up drive 2-3km and die rest for 5min and repeat, we found out later is had a dirty gas filter, thus the gas wasn't reaching the carbs and it would die.)
Anyway this is the current picture of my buddie's bike, this amazingly customized 79 cx500!

IT features a Torquey V-Twin with Shaft Drive
Lotus Yellow : Tank, fenders, FRAME