The Frankie Build Part 2
If you ask anyone who ever built anything in their life’s they would probably tell you to make sure everything is mechanically sorted before you go into the making it look good rabbit hole so naturally me being an anti-social weirdo that cringes at the idea off asking anyone anything I didn`t….I went full commando on making Frankie look like the bike I had dreamed about. I spent many hours just sitting in the garage looking at him thinking where to begin, what to do and how the hell to do it. I started off by removing the awful handlebars that went from the tank to the moon, who the hell thinks that’s a good idea??? you are basically an open parachute riding down the road catching all the wind, stones and small animals that are out there. As soon as I took the handlebars off he just looked good, slick I could see the vision I had by just doing that small step so I was properly motivated to keep ripping shit off, the amount of metal I took off him made this the only CM125 superleggera in the world a true performance machine capable of 0 to 100 in way under 2 minutes.
The splash guards front and back came off together with a strange metal contraption on the back that looked like something you could use to grill a Tuna on a summer day. I bought high temp black spray for the engine and exhaust and everything else I went from the original dark red to gloss black, I had my parents over for Christmas and my dad can`t be without doing something so we had a fantastic father and son time inhaling paint fumes and rust dust whilst drinking beer, he probably found out those weeks that I swear like a sailor and drink like my life depends on it. I added some chrome gold wrapping to give Ma Boy some pop, i also went for some tyres that would be at home on the best motocross tracks in the world for added uncomfort which as I shall explain later make for some of the most thrilling experience ever on the smooth alpine roads around here.
This picture was taken probably 1 or 2 days after I bought Frankie…..only thing different on ma boy is the handlebars at this point
I modernized the lights to full LED front and back, the back light was fairly simple to make work with a bit of trial and error but the front one was a task and a half, this bike is from 1988 and I couldn`t find any information online on what any of the cables did soooooo it took me about 1 week and a ungodly amount of Corona ( The beer not the virus ) to make it work as it should with a daylight and all….bahhh I swear that was probably the hardest bit of it all. For the style of Frankie i also bought a cafe racer seat online and then had to send it off to get lengthened by about 7 cm to fit him properly, bought some black rubber covers for the front suspension arms and also got a side licence plate holder and had to extend the light for the plate to reach it down there, I decided against turn signals not because I wanted it to feel like a BMW but because i didn`t want anything to mess with his lines and the tiny led ones where 340 fr. for 4 of them and I didn’t want to spend more on the turn signals then the bike itself. At this point he pretty much looked like he does today in all his glory. The mechanical side came next and it was the biggest learning experience ever because I didn`t expect the amount of work and trouble that was about to hit me like a brick.
