I have been lurking on these forums for the past couple months while rebuilding my Hawk. The story of its start was a bit interesting. I wasnt even thinking of rebuilding one and had never even heard of them until I was shown this one. From then on it was a lot of learning.
I had initially went to my local salvage yard to look at possibly rebuilding a VFR. I had just finished rebuilding an 85 CB450 that came from there and made a pretty nice cafe racer out of it. Once I was done I had sold it and started looking for the next thing to keep my attention.
It started innocently with the question, Have you ever heard of a Hawk GT Honda made for a couple years? Well of course I hadn't and he knows I like working on unique bikes, things you dont see on the road all the time.
So he took me to the back and pulled aside a few gas tanks and buried under all of them was an 88 Hawk GT... well most of it. All it had was the frame, engine and rear wheel. The front end was on it but it had been in a head on collision so the front triples and forks were destroyed. bent back into the radiator. The bottom Triples were actually broken off the center bar so it was only held together with the top clamps.
The bike ended up costing me, in the state it was in 750.00 but they also included the F3 front end including the wheel, breaks, bars and controls.
This is the closest I have to a before picture. Which was after I had installed the F3 front end and found a tank that was in really bad shape in the yard somewhere.
IMG_20210213_160029737.jpg
As you can see, was missing a lot of things.
As luck would have it, a shop down the road from me happened to get in an 89 model they were parting out that same week. I was able to source the tank, tail plastics and the best part, a keyed ignition.
Here is wat it looked like while I was working on it in front of my apartment. ( I wish I had a garage to work in, especially living in Arizona )
IMG_20210227_171903413_HDR.jpg
Prior to getting the tail plastics I was trying to modify one from an f4i, after some frustration and realizing I need more practice with this sort of thing I went with the OEM version
IMG_20210309_125831386_HDR.jpg
I also swapped out the rear wheel, carrier, brake and caliper mount with a VFR750
IMG_20210412_075610765_HDR.jpg
After about 3 months of work, this is what it looks like now.
IMG_20210531_121155476_HDR.jpg
The fixes and updates I made to it are:
Front end is a CBR600 F3, The bottom clamp is the F3 while the top clamp is the Hawks ( Also did new All Balls head bearings and complete fork rebuild )
Trail Tech SV650 gauges with the mounting plate from a member here.
Rear wheel, hub, carrier, brake and caliper mount is from a VFR750
Head light is from a Harley VRod, I just really liked the look of it.
The Fuse box, I extended the wiring and moved it to under the seat in the little storage area under the passenger seat.
Uni pod filters.
Removed all of the smog stuff ( this was a Cali bike )
Because the electric fuel pump was scavenged from this bike during its time in the yard I went with a vacuum pump, which you can see mounted on the side.
Radiator is from a Magna V45
The exhaust is the stock headers with a generic carbon fiber muffler.
One thing I wish you could see is the paint job I did on the tank and tail. Its a Pearl Red that was used by Toyota, which has some copper / gold flakes when the sun hits it right, but it doesn't really show up on camera.
I wish I could say this was a fairly easy rebuild, but it was far from it. It felt like the bike would fight all the time. Luckily these forums helped out a ton with the little issues I would come across. The most recent was the bike would not run right in 1st and 2nd gear and I could not figure it out. Everything seemed to be right... Then about a week ago while I was looking around I found a thread that talked about the atmosphere ports on the carbs. Like an idiot, I had thought they were vacuum lines from the smog stuff and had capped them off. Once I took off the caps and re-ran the hoses for those its been running like a champ.
I just enjoy finding bikes like these that people walk past all the time in the yard and bring them back to life. This one was last registered in 1995 and had been in the yard since around 1996 just slowly being buried by gas tanks and bike parts.
I had initially went to my local salvage yard to look at possibly rebuilding a VFR. I had just finished rebuilding an 85 CB450 that came from there and made a pretty nice cafe racer out of it. Once I was done I had sold it and started looking for the next thing to keep my attention.
It started innocently with the question, Have you ever heard of a Hawk GT Honda made for a couple years? Well of course I hadn't and he knows I like working on unique bikes, things you dont see on the road all the time.
So he took me to the back and pulled aside a few gas tanks and buried under all of them was an 88 Hawk GT... well most of it. All it had was the frame, engine and rear wheel. The front end was on it but it had been in a head on collision so the front triples and forks were destroyed. bent back into the radiator. The bottom Triples were actually broken off the center bar so it was only held together with the top clamps.
The bike ended up costing me, in the state it was in 750.00 but they also included the F3 front end including the wheel, breaks, bars and controls.
This is the closest I have to a before picture. Which was after I had installed the F3 front end and found a tank that was in really bad shape in the yard somewhere.
IMG_20210213_160029737.jpg
As you can see, was missing a lot of things.
As luck would have it, a shop down the road from me happened to get in an 89 model they were parting out that same week. I was able to source the tank, tail plastics and the best part, a keyed ignition.
Here is wat it looked like while I was working on it in front of my apartment. ( I wish I had a garage to work in, especially living in Arizona )
IMG_20210227_171903413_HDR.jpg
Prior to getting the tail plastics I was trying to modify one from an f4i, after some frustration and realizing I need more practice with this sort of thing I went with the OEM version
IMG_20210309_125831386_HDR.jpg
I also swapped out the rear wheel, carrier, brake and caliper mount with a VFR750
IMG_20210412_075610765_HDR.jpg
After about 3 months of work, this is what it looks like now.
IMG_20210531_121155476_HDR.jpg
The fixes and updates I made to it are:
Front end is a CBR600 F3, The bottom clamp is the F3 while the top clamp is the Hawks ( Also did new All Balls head bearings and complete fork rebuild )
Trail Tech SV650 gauges with the mounting plate from a member here.
Rear wheel, hub, carrier, brake and caliper mount is from a VFR750
Head light is from a Harley VRod, I just really liked the look of it.
The Fuse box, I extended the wiring and moved it to under the seat in the little storage area under the passenger seat.
Uni pod filters.
Removed all of the smog stuff ( this was a Cali bike )
Because the electric fuel pump was scavenged from this bike during its time in the yard I went with a vacuum pump, which you can see mounted on the side.
Radiator is from a Magna V45
The exhaust is the stock headers with a generic carbon fiber muffler.
One thing I wish you could see is the paint job I did on the tank and tail. Its a Pearl Red that was used by Toyota, which has some copper / gold flakes when the sun hits it right, but it doesn't really show up on camera.
I wish I could say this was a fairly easy rebuild, but it was far from it. It felt like the bike would fight all the time. Luckily these forums helped out a ton with the little issues I would come across. The most recent was the bike would not run right in 1st and 2nd gear and I could not figure it out. Everything seemed to be right... Then about a week ago while I was looking around I found a thread that talked about the atmosphere ports on the carbs. Like an idiot, I had thought they were vacuum lines from the smog stuff and had capped them off. Once I took off the caps and re-ran the hoses for those its been running like a champ.
I just enjoy finding bikes like these that people walk past all the time in the yard and bring them back to life. This one was last registered in 1995 and had been in the yard since around 1996 just slowly being buried by gas tanks and bike parts.
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