The Frankie Build Part 1

What you`re about to read is the epic tale of an idiot without any clue on how to build a bike that somehow managed to build it, ride it and fall in love

This isn`t a Blog or some fancy written text with expensive words and zero cursing, this is a story told by a guy that had a stupid idea whilst drinking alone in his garage…who hasn’t been there?

This is how Frankie showed up at my house, not as advertised, rusty and as I later found out…..drum roll…. a broken motor

Somehow I’ve put it through my head that what I needed in life was to buy a bike as old as me to go from home to my favourite biker café a couple miles away, so to google I went in search of the perfect bike, I found that in the 1988 Honda CM 125. I didn`t want a perfect example because my plan was to trash it all so all I actually needed was a good frame and an engine but that was not as easy to find as you can expect, either they were mint and too expensive or they were shit and still too expensive. At this point I still had very little knowledge to work on a project like this, I knew how to change the oil and that was it so as time progressed my self confidence that was already low kept sinking and my hope to find a bike kept sinking with it. Then one day on a selling platform where you can sell shit you don’t need any more there it was, a 1988 CM 125, as ugly and wonky as can be, had a face not even a mother could love but me being a hopeful idiot saw the potential so I contacted the seller, as per usual he said it was perfect, it ran beautifully until he parked it ( it really didn’t ) so I agreed to buy it for a mind blowing 275 fr. with delivery. I felt really smart, I thought this would take 1 beer and a new battery and off I would go into the Swiss sunset ( what an idiot ). So the bike arrived and it had surface rust everywhere, the battery wasn’t in it and even the cables for it where cut off because apparently that`s easier to do then taking 2 10mm bolts out…I was a bit bahhhhhh but I thought well at the very least I can sell it for parts if everything else goes wrong. I took some pictures of the turd and wheeled it into my garage where it would be living till the day it could get a license plate and ride out into the world.