Honda CX 500 “Dark”

Every build has a story around it and this one was an important one for Boogie the Gorilla & myself.
It kicked off in 2012 when Den had just moved out from his mate’s shed and rented part of a unit in at Burton Farm on the outskirts of Stratford-upon-Avon. (Still dreaming of setting up a full-blown custom shop one day). He won an auction for a garage clearance which had 4 restoration projects. Seriously!, it was more of a four rusty wrecks and one of them was a CX500 with high mileage and courier’s plastic baggage wrapped around it. But he knew straight away what the bike could become and to provide inspiration was the one and only Wrenchmonkees CX500 Custom!

Some of the tasty features on the bike are:
Custom electric/battery box tucked underneath the gearbox, custom 2 into 2 exhaust system, custom seat & pan, 16” rear wheel conversion, CBR 929 front brake master and clutch conversion, 5” bates headlight, Aluminum front and rear shorts mudguards, clip-ons and compact late model Honda switch gear.

Once all the mockup was completed, it was time for a full engine and chassis rebuild. The engine was tuned up and once finished, sounded amazing with the swept back pipes. There wasn’t the budget for fancy bodywork, so it had to be black. He wanted to call it “Darth” CX but didn’t need the copy right issues and thought it too embarrassing, hence CX “dark series” was born.
It was about this stage of the build where a life changing moment happened: Den dropped it off for a fresh MOT at a friend’s garage and guess who turned up…Clive Willimott… He loved the build, and both quickly became good friends, chatting about the bike for hours (as we all know, Den is “not very good at a quick chat“!) Even now Clive will tell you, this was the bike that inspired him to get in the custom bike scene and the rest is history….

The bike was sold on eBay to a fella in London who we never personally met. But he loved the end product and was over the moon with the quality he got for his pennies. Funny fact was, that 2 years later, the bike was back on eBay and sold for more money than we originally sold it for!

We haven’t had another chance to build a CX since. But we are sure to one day….