Topic: Noblehops makes a 400F pretty for his wife

[Stev-o]

You keep saying that you think carbs are out of sync, then show the choke plates, are you looking at the right end ?

Ha.....I was thinking the same thing.

[NobleHops]

OK, we're back at it now.

Came home after a trip to Tucson over Thanksgiving to find a half-dozen boxes of parts waiting for me. One great part of the trip to Tucson was a chance to pickup my carbs in person from Harisuluv, and put to rest one of the mysteries of them. Recall I thought the throttle shaft spring was incorrectly installed in part because there was a lot of play and binding in the throttle. That wasn't the issue at all: PO or someone else had evidently buggered the throttle shaft - there are apparently two pins that locate it on its length and if one doesn't know they are there upon attempting to disassemble them they are easily bent or broken. That is apparently what happened to mine, and it was causing it to bind, and would never have worked right. The good news is that Harisuluv recognized the issue, cannibalized a set he had and swapped the entire throttle shaft assembly for me as part of his service - unbelievable. Thank you again James and it was great to meet you.

Video of the good and bad throttle shaft assemblies:
http://youtu.be/SIULFiXIsyw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxXTl4YLrJ0#ws

Here's his gallery link for the before and after:

http://imgur.com/a/mOArA



More...

[NobleHops]

Did not have enough space and so spent pretty much all day Saturday cleaning and purging and reorganizing my little shop and hanging another light, making room on the shelves and building a few more to hold the parts and assemblies of things in process. Before and after photos would have been a help to show the difference but it's a huge improvement!



Dug out the new shifter shaft seal from my parts, then cleaned and polished that shifter shaft within an inch of it's life with crocus cloth, cleaned the seal recess as best I could, then oiled the shaft lightly and carefully slipped the seal over the splines and then onto the shaft. Rooted around my local hardware store for cutoff ends of a bunch of different diameters of PVC pipe, found one that was the perfect diameter for driving this seal. Cut it square in my miter box, sanded the ends till they were smooth and then tapped the seal home with the made driver and a rubber mallet. I put a smear of 3-Bond sealant around the outer edge just for fun.



Went after the nooks and crannies on the engine with brass brushes on my Dremel, picks and q-tips and solvent and compressed air, trying to get it very clean in preparation for paint. This cheapo HF engine stand is totally the $hit for this, you can rotate it 45 degrees and lock it in place, swivel it around to get the best light. Totally a back and timesaver and helping me do a better job, highly recommended.



Pulled all the side covers off and used a combination of rotary tools and fine sand paper to remove all the finish from them, and sanded out any fine scratches I could in preparation for paint.



Started masking off what I didn't want painted, got it about 3/4 ready to go.



...and that's where I'm at. Glad to be back into it, really want to get this engine paint done and curing in preparation for baking it so I can move onto the last of the disassembly and refinishing of the chassis, and then turn the corner to reassembly - hopefully by 1/1.

[NobleHops]

Side note: I am getting my butt kicked trying to embed video. What's the clue here?

http://youtu.be/SIULFiXIsyw

[MoMo]

Did you ever get the bike running?...Larry

[NobleHops]

Did you ever get the bike running?...Larry

No, see reply #35 - I got it ready to go, put oil in it and it came pouring out the shifter shaft seal. Had to send out the carbs and timing wise it made more sense for me to disassemble and get that stuff started while I was away.

[nvr2old]

Nice to follow along on the progress of another 400F.  I'm looking forward to getting back to my own as soon as I can get the garage back to a more comfy working temperature in the next couple of days.  It's been single digit highs for the past week and too cold to do any painting.  I'm at the same point as you with the engine.  Nicely done so far.  Keep up the good work. 

[MoMo]

Did you ever get the bike running?...Larry

No, see reply #35 - I got it ready to go, put oil in it and it came pouring out the shifter shaft seal. Had to send out the carbs and timing wise it made more sense for me to disassemble and get that stuff started while I was away.

What are your plans for the motor?  I usually disassemble the top end, rarely is anything amiss other than cam chain tensioner and related assemblies...Larry

[NobleHops]

Did you ever get the bike running?...Larry

No, see reply #35 - I got it ready to go, put oil in it and it came pouring out the shifter shaft seal. Had to send out the carbs and timing wise it made more sense for me to disassemble and get that stuff started while I was away.

What are your plans for the motor?  I usually disassemble the top end, rarely is anything amiss other than cam chain tensioner and related assemblies...Larry

PO had it apart, said he did the top end. I believed him.

[MoMo]

You can check compression to make sure as well as do a leak down test if you have access to a tester...Larry

[Apexxn]

Nice work.

When you get a chance post some pics of your forks. They don't look too bad from what I've seen so far.

Here's another pic of some wiring. When you start hanging the harness post up the areas you need and I'm sure we'll all pitch in and get you the shots you need.

[NobleHops]

Nice work.

When you get a chance post some pics of your forks. They don't look too bad from what I've seen so far.

Here's another pic of some wiring. When you start hanging the harness post up the areas you need and I'm sure we'll all pitch in and get you the shots you need.

You are a good man, thank you kindly.

I have a friend locally that has a 400F as it turns out and he very graciously agreed to let me borrow it for a few weeks during assembly of mine and that will be an invaluable source of par^h^h^h^REFERENCE as I do mine, but I'm still glad to have this and other photos.

The lathe idea was just to polish the pits with crocus cloth or something equally fine. I saw this done at a local BMW shop, looked fast and easy to do and a good way to do it, but just for being lazy. In fact they aren't too bad, the pits are small and I can likely polish them with a strip of crocus cloth and a little bit of oil and renew it now and then. I didn't mean I wanted to cut or turn them down.

Lemme see if I have a better close-up of the fork - if I don't I will photo them tonight and post. I'm overdue for an update to the thread anyway.

[NobleHops]

Nice to follow along on the progress of another 400F.  I'm looking forward to getting back to my own as soon as I can get the garage back to a more comfy working temperature in the next couple of days.  It's been single digit highs for the past week and too cold to do any painting.  I'm at the same point as you with the engine.  Nicely done so far.  Keep up the good work.

Meant to reply to this: Thanks for the good words!

[Apexxn]

Nice work.

When you get a chance post some pics of your forks. They don't look too bad from what I've seen so far.

Here's another pic of some wiring. When you start hanging the harness post up the areas you need and I'm sure we'll all pitch in and get you the shots you need.

You are a good man, thank you kindly.

I have a friend locally that has a 400F as it turns out and he very graciously agreed to let me borrow it for a few weeks during assembly of mine and that will be an invaluable source of par^h^h^h^REFERENCE as I do mine, but I'm still glad to have this and other photos.

The lathe idea was just to polish the pits with crocus cloth or something equally fine. I saw this done at a local BMW shop, looked fast and easy to do and a good way to do it, but just for being lazy. In fact they aren't too bad, the pits are small and I can likely polish them with a strip of crocus cloth and a little bit of oil and renew it now and then. I didn't mean I wanted to cut or turn them down.
Lemme see if I have a better close-up of the fork - if I don't I will photo them tonight and post. I'm overdue for an update to the thread anyway.

lol, someone says put them on a lathe and right away I think machine work. Now I get you yea. Something that you might try that I never have but heard good results with is to fill the divots with clear epoxy or crazy glue. Then when you do your emery on the lathe it will turn out nice and level.

[NobleHops]

OK so I owe this thread an update, just a quickie for now.

For no good reason other then they are 37 years old I decided I needed to replace the cush drive dampers in the rear hub, on my way to completely renewing the wheels. Those that have tried this already know what came next - this is a pain in the arse, but I do have a small contribution to make it 10% easier for the next foo^h^h^h^GUY that tries this. These dampers are more or less rubber rollers/donuts with a steel jacket on the inside and outside edges encasing them. The steel inserted tightly into the aluminum produces a tasty galvanic reaction more or less chemically welding these two together. That and the fact that the replacement dampers are $11 ea means that if I had it to do over I would not do it over. Yeah, they were hard as a rock, but still. ANYWAY...



Reading what threads I could find was little help, guys had resorted to desperate, spiteful attempts up to and including lighting their hubs on fire, and had no success other than cutting and hacking at them with pointy tools, huffing rubber smoke and sacrificing skin. I read a bunch of stuff on how to break these galvanic bonds using everything from heat/freeze cycles to phosphoric acid and more. I tried heating the aluminum body of the hub with MAPP gas, and then filling the (blind) recesses with a 50/50 blend of acetone and ATF, then removed the brew and put my blind bearing remover on the collar and whacked the living #$%* out of it, and pulled on it till I heard popping sounds from my joints. Nada. None of them so much as budged.





Tried heating it from within to break the bond, zilch. 

Then I had the bright idea to extract the rubber and inner collar with a hole saw, except the smallest I had was 1". Never fear, I sourced a 7/8" holesaw that was a near perfect fit and that is the most fruitful thing I tried - I was able to 'core' this thing very quickly with the holesaw and a corded drill as you would an apple, thinking I'd attempt extraction directly on the outer collar with heat and my blind bearing retainer. Except that my collets jumped from 20 to 25 mm and this called for a 22-23 mm collet, so that didn't work.



So I stopped short of hacking at it with tools, switched gears to skinning the wheels and hubs and cleaning it all up and made a strategic retreat today and brought it to a local machinist who said he can burn them out with an oxy/acetlylene torch without damaging the aluminum. And he'll have it for me tomorrow. So that's what we're doing.

[NobleHops]

Did some cleanup on my brake rotor too.



Sent out to my friend Tom at Truedisk, who ran it through his grinding and truing process. Had it drilled while he was at it, mostly because I like the way it looks and it has theoretical advantages in weight savings and heat dissipation. At $45 a rotor (not including the drilling) you can't go wrong, if you have enough meat on the rotor. http://www.truedisk.net/



So now the center of the disk was looking a bit tawdry, so I went after it with rotary tools and stripped off all the paint, in preparation for painting it.



That's better, time to mask it. But how to mask around the curved center section where it's raised? I scratched my head on that for a bit, tried and failed to do it with paper masking tape, and thought about how nice a nice flexible tape would work for this task, something nice and stretchy, that would cut cleanly...

ELECTRICAL TAPE!



I degreased the rotor well so the tape and paint would stick, then laid a strip of electrical tape in the crevice between the two planes, burnished it down with my thumbnail, then took a new Xacto blade and trimmed it. Perfect. Followed it with wide masking tape for the remainder of the surface, repeated on the other side, ready for paint.



...

 

[NobleHops]

Step 1 was with the VHT self-etching primer. Did two coats, let them dry for 45 min, the lightly sanded down a few toothy spots, then one light top coat of primer, let it dry for an hour, following their instructions. Yes I know I painted those rivets on the back side, I did it on purpose because I was lazy and didn't care :-) :



Warmed up the paint in a hot water bath to help it spray/flow more cleanly. I used the VHT high temp caliper paint because it's what I had laying around and I actually thought it a good choice given its heat and chemical resistant properties.



Hit the centers with three coats of the paint, letting each coat dry for 10 minutes in between, waited a couple of hours for it to partially cure, and pulled the tape before it got too stuck-on.





...and the next time the lovely wife heads out on an errand of a few hours or so  , I will bake it in the oven for an hour at 200 degrees as specified, and this will be done and done, and waiting for reassembly.

[Just4fun]

Very creative, I am subscribed


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[NobleHops]

One more for today:

Yep, lacking clue and finesse I admit this is how I resorted to getting these ancient tires off.



Having got my ass kicked for a couple of hours on the damper removal I was all in for a brute force solution on SOMETHING, and these wheels were the best available candidate for something along those lines. I don't know how the heck you'd ever have got these off without a tire machine, they were as hard as rocks and the dropout section in the center of the rim was tiny. After trying and failing to get them off with levers I pulled our Ye Olde Trusty Sawzall, levered the beads away from the wheel, held them with my foot while the beast did its work and that was that.

Just for fun I disassembled this rear wheel by hand, mostly to get a feel for working with the spokes because I haven't laced a wheel before, but once that was done I found my appetite for brute force was not quite satisfied, and so the front wheel got the bolt cutter treatment.



Cleaned everythign up in preparation for refinishing the hubs, bagged all my parts and stuff and cleaned up and called it a night.

[NobleHops]

My name is Nils and I have a tool problem.

(Those of you Old Timers that know all this can skip the preamble and get straight to the tool pr0n below)

These older Hondas use a funky screw-in bearing retainer system, with a big fat seal tucked in the back side. The spacers sit within the bore of the seal, and it does a decent job of keeping mung out and things together, but they are a PITA to remove sometimes. Once they are screwed in, Honda 'stakes' them, laying a pin punch right in the joint where the threads are and intentionally munging the threads into each other to prevent them backing out. Removal calls for drilling out the staked spot with a 1/8 drill bit, then putting a special tool that is sized for that particular bearing retainer, and then backing them out. They are soft and prone to damage, aluminum I think. There are two of them on this bike, different sizes, and they look like this:



A while back I bought this set, and it kicks ass:





And for $55 you can get it from Amazon, free shipping with Prime:

http://www.amazon.com/OTC-6613-Variable-Spanner-Wrench/dp/B000F5JMEA

You select the right pins that fit the holes in the retainer, screw them in to the arms of the wrench, put it on your freshly drilled bearing retainer, and back them out with zero fuss or drama.

[MoMo]

Is the spanner as well made as it seems to be from the photos?  Afterall,  one can never have too many quality tools..Larr

[NobleHops]

Very much so Larry, excellent quality tool. Recommended.

[MoMo]

Very much so Larry, excellent quality tool. Recommended.

thx,  probably pick one up as a belated Christmas present to self ...Larry

[NobleHops]

OK, on to painting the engine.

Spent a half an hour jamming rubber stoppers into the intakes, exhaust, and every other opening. Taped up the wires, and rolled it outside to get started prepping it for paint.

Diluted some Simple Green and used nylon brushes to clean and degrease everywhere I could reach. Rinsed it off, blasted it dry with compressed air.

Pulled out the soda blaster setup, discovered a punctured air hose, fixed it, and set to blasting the engine clean.




Got my cheapo HF engine stand assembled, scratched my head at a couple of odd things about it, but in fact it is quite sturdy and well designed for the most part. Every bearing was dry though and they used a cotter pin on the handle that I drilled and swapped for a hitch pin, but for the most part this is a damned good value. Did have to go to Home Depot and rummage through the plumbing parts for nipples to use as spacers and a few long bolts to use to connect up the engine to my mounting brackets.




Picked up the engine/mount and then contemplated how much I enjoyed my healthy back, and how hard it was going to be to gently thread it into the stand...

...put it back down and engaged my brain instead. Tilted the stand down to the floor, tipped the engine over into it, locked it in place...



...and then did an easy squat of the package to right it onto its casters.





More...

[NobleHops]

Spent another few hours with the Dremel and other abrasives and some acetone and got the engine as clean as possible, then went after some of the deeper scratches in the aluminum with ascending grades of sandpaper. Finished masking or plugging the last of the stuff that needed it, blew it all clean and could stall no longer - it was time to paint it.

First off, heat up the paint a tad in a hot-water bath to make it flow better.



Next, spray it with VHT's self-etching primer:



...and man does it look homely.



And then let that cure for an hour or so. At this point I made a mistake. I should have sanded it as it was pretty toothy, but this was the first time using the self-etching primer, and although i thought about it, I didn't do it.