As you might be aware, Aaron Colton loves dirt bikes. He grew up riding and fixing them, and we’ve shown you a few of his restoration videos from time to time here, as well. More than that, though, he just loves bikes. In this video, we get to see him take on a street project for a change of pace. 

Colton recently got his hands on a Honda Hawk GT 650 (RC 31, if you’re nasty). It was someone else’s neglected project bike, and already had a CBR front end conversion. You get to see him pick it up from the seller, who told him a bit about what he’d planned to do with it and how he got sidetracked. Cash exchanged hands, and pretty soon Colton was hauling it back home in his van.  

If it’s someone else’s project, it’s also someone else’s problems. Now, there are plenty of worse situations you could be in than what you’ll see in this video. However, some brilliant person decided to use whatever random American hardware sort of fit, instead of bothering with sourcing the correct metric bolts. As a result, Colton said, the whole thing was probably going to need to spend some quality time with a tap and die set. Nice work, previous owner!  

Then there’s the not-so-great matter of the extremely rusty fuel tank. While it didn’t turn out to be rusted all the way through, a quick look inside with a camera showed it was pretty disgusting on the inside. So, of course, Colton had to clean that up before he could do anything with it.  

That’s where you get to see something really cool, though. Sure, the guy has sponsors, and a show on the Red Bull Motorsports YouTube channel. Yet he’s still doing low-budget, effective stuff in his home garage, like the old vinegar-and-chain trick to get all that rust out. It’s honestly nice to see. I was also heartily amused by the makeshift oven he crafted to Cerakote and bake the frame—complete with food-safe meat thermometer for temperature monitoring. Nice.  

Doing a black oxide treatment on all the hardware was a nice touch, too. He also cleaned up but didn’t really make any changes to the engine. Later, he cleaned up the carbs, stuck some pod filters on them to help them breathe a little better, and that was effectively that.  

At the end, you get to watch him tear up the Malibu canyons on his new creation. This Honda Hawk restomod took just over three weeks to complete, for as nice a little canyon carver as you could want. Are you hitting your local bike classifieds up yet in another tab?  

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