If you’re a do-it-yourself type of person, your creativity may often know no bounds—up until it hits whatever budget you’ve imposed, of course. That is, of course, where your personal skill levels come into play, and that’s absolutely true if you’re attempting a custom bike project. Folks who are overflowing with the variety of skills they need to complete a project can usually do a lot themselves if they have time and reasonable access to both materials and tools.
That winning combination of things will usually save money versus hiring someone to do the work for you. Likewise, it may also save money over buying a bunch of bolt-on parts that may or may not fit or give the look that you’re going for. Every person is going to be different, and bring a different variety of skills, tools, and levels of confidence to the table. If you’re the type of person who picks up new skills easily, of course, so much the better.
It’s important to keep all that in mind when watching this impressive Honda CX 500 scrambler build timelapse from Australia-based YouTube channel Café Racer Garage. The CX 500 is a well-known and loved platform for customization all over the world—and the example that he starts out with is in somewhat rough (but not totally terrible) shape.
CRG describes this project as being completed “on a budget,” but of course those words are somewhat nebulous without specific information. What becomes crystal clear throughout the video is that he has a whole lot of skills and tools in his workshop, which enable him to do the vast majority of the work himself.
From pipe-bending to fabrication of small things like an underseat electronics tray, as well as transforming a kitchen cooling rack into a sweet headlight grill and sewing a very nice new cover to go over the new saddle and seat pan he’s built, it’s clear that he’s very good at a variety of things. At one point, he even builds a blast cabinet so he can clean up the exterior of the engine before giving it a high-temp rattle-can spray enamel refinish.
The point of filming all this, of course, is to both show off the finished result—which is beautiful—and also to inspire other people to try doing something like this on their own. It’s a noble cause, for sure. Everyone will have different skills, available tools, space, time, budget, and levels of confidence. As long as you have a willingness to learn, it’s almost never too late to get started. Remember to take things one step at a time, and to break large tasks down into smaller tasks, and you can hopefully avoid total overwhelm and instead enjoy the exhilaration of doing it yourself.
