Still praying Hondaman is going to be able to work me into his queue for a rebuild on my CB550 -- but I know he is busy as heck - and mine's a CB550 and he focuses more on the 750s - so, worst case scenario, I've been doing some research in the interim in case I need to dig into this myself.
These tight tolerances make my head spin - I write for a living, so numbers just %$#ing hurt my head. The mechanical part I feel confident I can carefully work my way through w/ the manual and doing a build thread here to garner the awesome resources of the community ... but the selection of the bearings gives me some concern. For one, on initial scouting, some of these simply do not seem to be available.
However, I can secure greens - and I've read in several places on here that guys say they simply replacing all the bearings with greens and then break in their bikes under 5000 rpm for the first thousand miles, making oil changes every 500 miles. I realize you'd still need to plastigauge the greens make sure you were too loose ...
but basic question: Is this a realistic alternative?
I have a handle on how to select the appropriate bearings -- but, the bike has 13,000 original miles, and has spun a bearing in the bottom end. If things evolve where I need to tackle this myself - is there any veracity to the idea of running all greens and just breaking it in easy?
Other question - the bike still runs - not a horrible sound yet, but you can hear it, so it's been parked until it can be properly repaired.
Is it likely the crank needs replaced? I may be ignorant, and there's simply no way to tell until you crack the cases -- but that also makes me nervous - cause would I be able to tell?
These are the questions that get me dizzy - i'm reading about 'out of round' or tolerances being a few thousands off, and other than plastiguage, I don't have access to anything that would measure those sorts of tolerances, and if I did, I'm not confident in my experience w/ this part of a bike.
Any thoughts are appreciated (and prayers that Hondaman can work me into his queue, lol)
-- I've spent a lot of hours on this old barn rescue, and the tank, side covers, brakes, bearings, etc. have all been rehabbed and are up to snuff -- so I can't let it go -- just trying to figure out options.
Worst nightmare is to invest the $$$$ in a bottom end rebuild and waste the investment due to lack of knowledge/experience w/ bottom-ends. I'm not a neophyte - changed engines, top ends, etc.; wrenched on bikes for many years - but never touched a bottom end. Just seems out of my league.
