Hi Everyone, My name is Kenny and I'm not new to the forum but I never post questions. I have been reading this forum for 3-4 years now to help assist with my 1978 CB550 Custom Build. I have finished the build now after 2 years or more. Mostly working weekends when I had a chance to work on it. I live in Toronto downtown but had to drive to Hamilton to a friends shop to work on the bike. So weekends were the only times I could get time to work on it. I spent many days at work day designing, day dreaming and reading about motorcycle parts I needed for the build.
I want to start by thanking everyone on this forum. I have to say that this is the best motorcycle forum I have been on. That is partly due to the amount of great people providing great knowledge and education on so many types of Honda SOHC4s. The other credit is due to the people who run this site. I don’t even know what their names are on here but I know they do a great job. Organized, and all the information you need on any SOHC4 is on here. If it isn’t pre-documented here, someone else knows the answer. I have had all the brands. I have a Kawasaki and a Suzuki along with my Honda now and no other forum is nearly as good as this forum. I wish everyone of you existed on a Kawasaki forum. It would make my life building a GPz track bike just as easy as building my Honda.
Anyways, on to the build.
It Started life as a mostly stock 1978 CB550. “Need’s some cosmetic work and the carbs cleaned” is what the P.O. owner told me. He had it running when I arrived but no test ride was done (ill pay for that as you'll see). I bought it for $800 CAD. Delivered to my house for an extra $100. I immediately starting taking it apart and taking pictures so I could design the build I wanted. Photoshop and some 3D programs were my main tools for designing. Along with hand sketching parts (Industrial Designer by career). I wasn’t happy with the stock tank so I bought a used CB750 tank off Ebay and had a friend cut some knee dents in it for me ( it wasn’t in good shape so don’t worry. Having the giant knee dents allowed us to clean out all the rust). After pressure testing he gave it back and I did the body work and paint. Oh and Sealed the inside with Por (ill be regretting that im sure). I only had to modify the cb550 rubber stops and cut the posts down a bit and the CB750 tank slipped right on. I also picked up a 2006 GSXR 600 front end with hand controls and calipers off ebay. It was in great shape. Pressed in new taper bearings from AllBalls (I used their conversion chart. Its genius!). Worked flawlessly. No need to modify the steer tube or anything. You do need a spacer for the lower bearing race so it does not seat too high up in the neck. I have a somewhat local machine shop I email all my drawings to and they ship the parts back within a week depending on the complexity of the part. This is where I had the spacers for the front spoked wheel made as well. I purchased a 2001 narrowglide Harley 40 spoke aluminum double disc front hub off ebay. Had the machine shop bore out the inside to accept the larger bearing crush washer from the GSXR axel and pressed in the GSXR bearings into the Harley hub. With a few spacers here and there they were a direct fit because the outside diameter was the same as the stock Harley bearings. The Suzuki bearings are narrower though, so you need some intelligent spacers made besides the crush spacer. After that, I had some brake rotor spacers made up to get the right width to match the caliper centers. For anyone that’s interested, 5.035” wide was how wide the stock 2006 GSXR rims brake rotor surfaces are apart from each other. I then mounted the stock GSXR rotors to those spacers and they aligned perfectly with the calipers. Once I had the front hub/axel sorted out, I laced up some Sun brand aluminum 19” rims. Had them painted black and installed stainless spokes. I also ran some black braided stainless brake lines. That wrapped up the front end. The rear rim I swapped out for the stock size 19” Sun aluminum rim and stainless spokes on the stock hub. After riding it, I wish I did a disc brake conversion, but that will give me something to do after a season or two of riding. Then I fitted some YSS shocks to the rear. 1” taller than stock. I then moved onto the frame, welding in a frame loop and cutting off any useless tabs as I has planned on relocating electricals under the tail section. I cut off the passenger foot peg tab and re welded it onto the passenger foot peg loop in a lower and a more forward position than the stock passenger pegs. In between the stock location and the passenger pegs. Then I fitted Tarrozzi rear sets. I had the machine shop make me up a bunch of parts for the linkages. As well I used a stock modified CBR1000 shifter arm. It slid right onto the stock CB550 shifter shaft. I fabricated a metal seat pan and a fiberglass Seat cowl. frenched in a ’39 ford style LED taillight into the cowl and hid a LI ION battery under the cowl along with the other crucial electronics. A close friend of mine carved out some seat foam and wrapped it in brown leather with gold stitching. Gold to match the forks and other gold accents. While doing all this work I was also working on the motor. Initially I stripped the entire engine down. Split the cases, only to discover 4th gear was blown out (should have test drove it). So I bought a good set of gears off ebay ( they turned out to be better shape than I thought) and I rebuilt 4th gear and inspected for any other issues. I had the rest of the motor cleaned up and inspected at a local engine machine shop. They soda blasted and glass beaded a bunch of parts. It came back perfect looking. After reassembly I ran into an issue where my own stubbornness and cheapness led to another complete tear down and rebuild. When I took the jugs to the Machine shop, the first time, I told them not to worry about inspecting the bores themselves cause I was confident they were good and I was only going to hone the cylinders. He urged me to have them checked but I refused. They checked it for everything else, just not the bores. They had the head decked .003”-.005” and everything else looked great. Problem was the bores were oval. No honing in the world would have fixed it. I put in new stock rings and they were unable to seat against the oval bores. Oil was getting past the rings like crazy. It was immediately apparent to a friend what had happened with my engine. I pulled the head and had the cylinders and head brought back to the machine shop. He told me the cylinders were worn oval over time. 35,000 kms on the clocks when I bought it. So I had some options. One of which I choose to go with was the Dynoman Hot street piston kit. Punching it out to 592ccs and adding a new top end to it. Cam shaft, valves, springs, ti retainers, guides, seals, and then mild porting to the intake runners and intake and exhaust ports. So I had the machine shop get all that work done. When I got the parts back after 2 weeks I reassembled, braking the lowest oil ring on piston 2 when installing them into the head. The chamfer at the bottom of the cylinders was not as big as before and thus A LOT harder to get the rings in smoothly. I tried my fingers but sliced my fingers up on the rings. After ordering a new set of rings to replace the one I broke, and waiting for my fingers to heal, I also ordered some small motorcycle piston ring tools. 2 sets. This made it so easy I laughed afterwards at how easy it was. The Popsicle stick method or finger method does not work so well when the motor is in the frame. A lot less space to maneuver. I finally got everything installed and it was time to degree in the cam. This was like a mystery process to me at first as I have never even heard of this before. I did a lot of research and watched a lot of videos on doing it. Cars and Bikes. After trying it, and following the steps, Degreeing in a cam isn’t that hard. You just need the right tools. I replaced the Primary Chain and cam chain too. I topped the motor off with a dyna s ignition and 5 ohm coils. A Mac 4 into 1 header with a cone engineering muffler. Wired in a Motogadget speedo/tach and rewired most of the bike. After a few electrical gremlins were fixed, the bike started first try. After some warm-up it idle’d almost perfect. I was blown away. It sounds great. Not too loud. I have some photos and video. Ill post em up as soon as I figure out how.
I know TwoTired is taking a break from the forum but if someone could pass along my Special thanks to Him and let him know how much his help meant to me, that would be great.
Thanks again!
