Step 1
After a year's worth of badgering I finally convinced my mate Pete to part with his CCM 604.
Pete stripped the bike in 2004 to fix an oil leak but obviously got a bit carried away, and what you see here is how it sat in his (and his neighbours) garage for two years.
I had originally offered to kindly take it off Pete's hands for a nominal sum over a year ago, but he still had the (deluded) intention of re-building it himself. A year after my first offer I asked again (this time after a few drinks) and he accepted. I turned up in a van a week later having not actually seen the bike, and was a little surprised at how many bits it was in.
And this is what I got for my money (admittedly not a lot of money)...
An engine in a baking pan, two sets of wheels, a partially stripped frame, one big cardboard box of parts and two tupperware boxes of assorted nut's and bolts. And most crucially, no workshop manual.

Step 2
It was beginning to look like it could languish in my garage as long as it had in Pete's and took several months before I summoned the courage to open the door and get stuck in.
Plan A was to chuck it back together and have some fun on it.
Plan B was to get the frame and wheels powder coated, then go through all the accessory catalogues and order loads of bling.
Plan C it was then. First job was to strip down what was left. At this point I began to wonder if I was going in the right direction and maybe I should have just chucked it all back together after all...

Step 3
Then my absolute favourite job, preparation... It's all in the preparation they say. The SAS (it was a long time ago and I can't talk about it here for security reasons) have a saying - The seven P's - which goes; Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance, hence me spending two days with a bucket of cold water and a pack of wet or dry sanding down all the nooks and crannies in the frame. Obviously I could have had the frame sandblasted but I thought losing my fingertips in the middle of winter would be more fun. And there's nothing like the feeling you get knowing you've done all the work yourself (especially when your trying to tie your shoe laces with bloody finger tips).

Step 4
Then to paint. Unfortunately I am incredibly impatient and I had some left over paint lying around from the last project. Not quite enough blue though, so I added a bit of white to make it go a bit further... I now regret this as the colour looked ok at the time but now clashes (so my wife tells me) with the blue of the bodywork. Plus I have to put up with all the "I told you so's" whenever she sees the bike.
Production then came to a halt while I waited for a new head bearing to turn up. Due to some confusion with the supplier it didn't actually turn up at all, and nobody else had them except CCM who wanted an absolute fortune. Call it impatience or penny pinching but I decided to clean the grubby original and put it back in (probably to rear it's ugly head in the very near future).

Step 5
Putting the engine back in the frame should be a pretty straightforward job. You would think. I taped up all the areas I though contact may occur to protect my lovely new blue paint, and attempted to ease the engine into the frame from the right hand side. However it didn't seem to want to go in, so I switched sides and made an attempt from the left. After about 30 minutes of struggling I managed to get the engine well and truly wedged in the frame. I couldn't get it in, or back out. In amongst all my huffing, cursing and grazing I was scratching the frame to bits through the poorly applied 'protective' tape. By this stage, I really didn't care. I managed to free the engine from the clutches of the evil frame and decided I'd have one more try fitting it from the right. No surprise then that it slipped in straight away, oh how I laughed about the 2 hours I'd just spent grazing knuckles and swearing.

Step 6
The next stage was to simply start bolting bits back on. Then taking them back off, putting the correct bit on, with the wrong bolt from the nut 'n' bolt lunch box. Unfortunately there isn't a manual available for these bikes, although you can purchase a badly photocopied version for the engine. Which I have, and it looks like it was done by a five year old with a pack of crayons.
I also took this opportunity to adjust the rear suspension to more road biased settings as apparently it's another knuckle scraping adventure adjusting them on a fully built bike. I changed the fork oil for something a bit heavier too but it didn't actually look any different from what came out, so I guess I'll find out on the first test ride of CCM Blamange.

Step 7
Next up was fitting the carb, taking the carb back off as you cant fit the choke cable when it's on the bike, taking the sub frame back off again to fit the air box (cursing the fact I'd used locktight on all the nuts) and figuring out the routing of some of the cables. This was made 'easier' by scouring the internet for pictures and posting questions on one of the CCM forums (very helpful chaps).

Step 8
I'd been putting off the wiring for as long as possible as there seemed to be way too much of it for such a small bike. It wasn't actually as bad as I had feared, most of the plugs made it fairly obvious which way they went and a few useful reference pictures and a wiring diagram from a guy on the CCM forum helped sort the routing. My one concern was the fact that so much of it lives in the air box, including the starter solenoid and a few relays... mixing sources of ignition and fuel seem like a recipe for a non BMW like heated seat to me. Look out for a blue and white fireball near you soon...

Step 9
The rear fender and side panels are the same as a 96-01 Yamaha YZ and just needed a little trimming to fit. The original heat guard on the exhaust was damaged and was only a token gesture anyway so I decided to cover it with thermotec wrap. As you can see I ran out before the end of the pipe but I not sure about the look so it may be coming back off again, especially as it's now white with red spots where I sliced a knuckle open on one of the new wavy discs and didn't notice until I felt faint from the huge blood loss.
Once again production grinds to a halt. Firstly I ordered the wrong size front sprocket which would have made 1st and 2nd gear redundant and secondly I was still unable to find the correct colour paint for the tank, and I was reluctant to add yet another shade of blue to the colour scheme.

Step 10
My first bit of bling for the bike was a set of wavy discs by Braking, they look cool and the front is a whopping 320mm. It also needed a bracket to move the calliper further out and a bit of modification as the disc is a fair bit thicker than the original. However it does look like only half the disc is being clamped by the pads, but I'm sure they will be an improvement, and if not they still look good. They also have very sharp edges (see above).

Step 11
Chain and sprockets now fitted (with standard gearing until I learn to count properly). The seat came back from the trimmers and looked great, unfortunately the paint saga continues... I gave a sample to a local paint shop for him to have some paint made up for me. However he said that there's no chance of the paint taking to the tank due to the type of plastic it's made from. Now, he's not the first person to tell me this (probably the fifth) but for some reason I still wanted to try it myself. I knew it would probably just peel off again but I had to see for myself, and then I could begin to think of an alternative, which would be lots of work or lots of money or both.
I also fitted an LED tail light which took a bit longer than expected as the yellow wire turned out to be earth and black live...

Step 12
I decided to fit a decent headlight for the benefit of all those myopic car drivers out there, especially as I have gone without indicators and mirrors, for that authentic SuperMoto look. Unlike most off road light units this one has a 55W dipped and a 55W high beam. Hopefully this coupled with the deafening exhaust will help avoid any "I didn't see you" incidents. The unit comes with rubber mountings and is designed to fit direct to the forks but the CCM has a metal instrument support in between so this had to be drilled and the light fitted to it. It's surprising how strong a piece of 2mm stainless can be... well, stronger than a set of halfords finest drill bits for sure. How many cheap sets of drill bits does a person have to buy before they realise that they are as soft as Andex puppies on a roll and last just as long (depending on your diet).  

Step 13
And so the tank saga continued... Having finally found someone to mix me the correct colour paint, I decided to listen to everyone's advice (a first for me) and not attempt to paint the tank, I also wanted to avoid another "I told you so" session with the wife.
So to plan B. I would first paint the tank with two coats of fibreglass resin and then paint that. Now, in the past I've always mixed in a little too much hardener and painted about three strokes before the brush has gone hard and stuck to the first thing it comes into contact with. So this time I thought I'd follow the instructions (yet another first) and mix the correct amounts of resin and hardener. And that's why, four days later it was sitting indoors next to a radiator still tacky to the touch... Unfortunately there was no plan C.