My roommate and I live in Brighton, a suburb of Boston. We have been looking at old Honda's for a while and we've been scanning these forums for awhile. Finally, we can contribute. We bought a 1972 Cb350F from a guy just north of Boston for $500. It has about 40,000 miles on it. It didn't start but we bought it anyways. The story we got from the guy was that he inherited it three years ago from an inlaw where it had been sitting for a decade and now he has been riding it for the last three seasons. He says it has been running better and better each season but it definitely needs some work and he doesn't want to get into it. He says it's always leaked some oil around the head gasket and at the beginning of this season he took it to a dealer and they told him there is no compression on one cylinder. My roommate and I are new to motorcycles and we don't know what we're doing but we wanted a little project. My biggest hope is that replacing the gaskets will take care of the low compression issue? We fired it up after adding some oil and gas and jumping it with a car. There are some other minor issues that will have to be dealt with. (One of the bleeder tubes is pouring gas so a float in the carb is stuck?, left blinkers don't blink, battery is crap) These are things I'm happy to fuss with but we really need to get to the main problem which is compression.
So far we've pulled the carbs off and fussed with the floats(didn't fix the bleeding gas problem) and yesterday we managed to pull the engine off the bike. I've got the service manual and this amazing forum but I'm a little nervous about opening up the engine now. I've got basic tools but no specialty motorcycle tools. I'll post some pictures of the bike soon. I also have a video of it running that I would love to get some opinions about...doesn't sound that great. More to come!
thanks in advance for advice guys!
