So my cousin has had his CB500 apart for over a year now and we decided it was about damn time that it got put back together. It had a pretty severe oil leak so I gave him a top end seal kit for his wedding gift ... his wife loved it. lol
On Friday night I showed up after supper and was greeted with this.
He had the head and jugs surfaced. Machinist said all the valves were sealing well and didn't need any work but did replace the valve guide seals while he was in there. The cylinders and pistons were also in nice shape.
A few beers were had. We got the head on and torqued that night so we could come back in the morning and go through the torque sequence again after everything had settled.
The next morning we got the cam in and timed and were careful not to break any rockers while putting the rocker cover on. (A bit different than my 750 but interesting to see.)
We thrashed hard and got the engine in the frame. I would definitely recommend removing the exhaust studs and oil pan to do this ...we didn't... some scratches in the frame resulted. Not many pictures because we were going hard at this point.
Fillin 'er up with oil. My cousin has an old hospital bed as a bike lift ... actually works pretty slick! Has a hand crank for up and down adjustment. Kind of creepy though if you think about it too much. lol
We got it down on the ground and slapped the tank and seat on and put some gas in it.
Turns out the petcock leaks like a sieve. ha
But it's looking pretty good now that it's all back together again.
First of all we figured out the battery was dead as a stone ... damn ... no functioning volt meter to be found in the farm shop ... damn ... kicked it over ~100x to try and get some oil flowing ... We finally tried to start it and it ran like crap. Hmmm, seemed to be running on 2 cylinders. Cylinders 2 and 3 not firing at all. This was odd since the electrical wasn't really touched. I got poking around with a test light we dug up and found out the coils were getting power but the 2-3 points weren't switching for some reason. Traced it back and found that the condenser connection must have been shorting to the case. A quick adjustment later and ...
She runs on all 4!
http://vid1070.photobucket.com/albums/u485/iron_worker/CB500/2015-03-22%2004.07.22_zpsudiamhwb.mp4At this point it was running on just what was in the carbs since we had to dump the tank out sine it was leaking too bad. It was also smoking a bit because we oiled up the pistons and cylinders pretty good to ease assembly (which really helped!).
Anyway, a new petcock is ordered and she needs a bit more work like tires, a few cables, general tune-up, etc.
We put in 14+ hours that weekend with about 12 being on Saturday so it was pretty satisfying when we finally did get it running as was the plan.
IW
