Andrew Cornelissen is a motorcyclist and fabricator in Portland, Oregon. His Honda CB500 custom always cruised smoothly into events looking debonaire and classy. I had to get some photos to share. That turned into me asking him all the work he’d done and well, it’s quite the list. Andrew is the founder and owner of Little Horse Cycles, does fantastic fabrication, welding, and top notch motorcycle build projects.
The bike is rather ingenious in design in many ways, when you look below at the mod list you’ll see what I mean. It’s impressively light with a dry weight of 365 lbs/165.5 kg and the entire build cost $1600 including title, all parts, and the original purchase. If you went to the 2012 One Motorcycle Show, you may have spotted it on display.
- Clip ons – I built custom and used the original bars for the ends
- Headlight – original cut down to lower the light
- Fork brace – Hand built and back yard machined
- Stainless brake lines
- Pods
- Braced Swing arm for rigidity and to hold the tire hugger
- Hand made carbon fiber exhaust cannister recycled and shrunk down from a wrecked Supra exhaust
- Hand formed aluminum tail cowl with frenched tail light that houses the battery
- Hand formed aluminum seat pan and custom seat
- Raised the tank an inch
- Cut out the knee and handle bar dents on tank and formed new sheet for them
- Machined new gas lid latch from aluminum and brass
- Hand made rearsets, moved them back and up
- Hand made shifter linkage
- From the headers back 4 into 1 collector recycled from a turbo subaru exhaust
- Hand made gauge face with grafted in speedo
- Cut down original controls to be smaller
- Kick start only now to save weight
- Paint Ghost Pearl White with racing stripe
- Drilled the rotor myself of course
- Blended the rear of the frame to match the cowl
- Shaved all the tabs off
- Dyna Ignition
- Polished tones of stuff and painted everything including the frame and rims etc
It has seen about 3500 miles since the build.
Make sure to check out the Little Horse Cycles facebook page.
Photography by Alicia Mariah Elfving / copyright themotolady.com 2012.
Mary McGee is a pioneer in American motorcycle racing, thanks to her untamable determination and a spirit as warm as her smile. Her excitement for motorcycling, especially racing, is contagious even in her eighties. She was the first woman to receive an FIM racing license in the United States, first woman to complete the Baja 1000, and the first woman to race the Baja 500 solo. These aren’t her only firsts, either. She was also the first woman in motocross and road racing in the States. McGee was rightly inducted into the AMA Hall of Fame in 2018.
Tags: 1970s, 1972, 70s, andrew cornelissen, article, blog, cafe racer, cb500, custom, little horse cycles, motorcycle, motorcycles
Posted on March 20, 2013 in Motorcycles by Alicia Mariah Elfving