After spending some time poring over a ton of similarly ratty bikes in Google Images, I decided to ditch the original seat in favor of a flatter, leaner looking one... so I pulled out an old sheet of 3/4'' ply and a jigsaw and went to work. I've never upholstered anything before, but I was surprised at how easy it was. I stapled a couple layers of carpet padding to the wood base, wrapped it in batting and finished it off with some faux-leather I got cheap at the local fabric store. My wife is an avid seamstress, so she gave me some tips; I think the whole thing came out looking pretty slick, and it's not uncomfortable.
I also shot the tank with some flat black barbeque paint. The dents are still noticeable, but at least I got rid of the surface rust and old orange paint.
I think a motorcycle should be as loud as possible, so, seeing as how the exhaust pipe looked pretty stupid to begin with and had a hole in the muffler, I went ahead and sawzalled it off just past the foot peg. I flat blacked it to match the tank, and remounted it with new bolts to replace the rusty, stripped studs that miraculously didn't snap during removal. Now the bike sounds like an amplified, coal powered chainsaw on steriods. I recently left my buddy's house and rode home, a trip of at least a mile through my rural hometown. He called me to say that he could hear me all the way to my house!
The next day all my new cables and my headlight finally showed up. Unfortunately, it didn't come with mounting hardware. I dug through my bin of old bicycle parts and found a couple of crankset bolts from an old fixie project. They look great as mounting bolts and even have rubber bushings that keep the light snug and relatively vibration free. Now that I had a headlight it was time to think about tail lights. I shopped around on Ebay trying to find an old bobber-style break/tail light, but I didn't want to drop the 50-100 bucks that a cool one would cost. Finally, I went down to Kragen to see what they could do for me, and I ended up just buying a replacement 12v Taurus tail light. I replaced the bulb with a 6v, mounted it with a modified Simpson framing bracket, and wired it up.
It works great, and looks pretty good sitting on the edge of the old plastic dirtbike fender I chopped and painted. A little conduit routes the wires up under the frame. The whole setup cost about $7: way cheaper than anything on Ebay.
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