Hello everyone!
Here I am completing the time honor tradition. What's the first thing you do after you purchase a motorcycle (besides ride it)? Join it's associated forum of course!
Anyway, up until this point I've always been in the new(er) motorcycle game, but I really wanted a cool project bike to tear apart and make my own little cafe bike over the winter months while I'm depressed for lack of riding here in Michigan. Plus learn a lot about stuff I've never dealt with (i.e. these carb thingies
)
As of last Friday I am the proud owner of a '78 Honda CB550 with about 17k miles on it! Here's the story in case anyone has any immediately apparent and upfront advice:
The craigslist ad said it runs. Woo hoo! I don't have to trailer it! So I show up, and the guy says it's been sitting for 3 weeks, and the battery seems to be dead, so he has to jump it. After a few attempts at jump starting, the bike finally chugs enough for him to hit the throttle, which promptly sticks exactly where he rolls it to, and holds it at a few thousand rpms for a couple minutes to make sure the battery gets a good charge in it. Then he closes the throttle and the bike manages to stay running. I took it around the parking lot, and was relatively convinced it's a good starting point at least. So I paid him the $700 for it, and rode it the half hour home! On the way home I noticed at speed with a constant throttle opening, sometimes it would begin to lurch and sputter like it was running out of gas and/or misfiring. But she stayed running (thank God!) all the way home!
Once she got home, I let her sit in the garage for less than two days, and when I tried to start her again, the battery lasted 3 or 4 starter pushes before it didn't have enough juice anymore. The bike wouldn't start. So I charged the battery on a tender for a while and eventually tried it again. No luck getting it to stay running. This was before trying the magical choke pull. I've heard a lot of stories of people simply cleaning out their carbs and fixing all kinds of problems that way, so I took the carbs off the bike, took the bowls off, and sprayed carb cleaner through just about every nook, cranny, and hole I could find (trying to avoid any seals I found). There really wasn't much gunk in there, and every hole I sprayed through seemed to spray through clean. Then I drained the gas tank just in case the gas was bad, and filled it with a gallon of fresh stuff. I put the entire thing back together, and tried to fire it up, with a fully charged battery. Bike wouldn't start on it's own, but when I pulled the choke all the way out, it would fire up and rev up to about 3k RPM, and kind of bounce up and down for a while. I tried to push the choke back in pretty quickly but the engine would just die, so I left it out for a couple minutes and finally got the bike to keep running without the choke! Victory! Kind of...
I got so excited I put my riding gear on, and decided to just ride it around the neighborhood. Despite the bike running at idle, it runs like absolute crap under acceleration and basic cruising speed. It sputters and lurches quite a bit under acceleration, despite increasing speed fine. Probably have a lot of maintenance and whatnot to do in the near future. I was hoping it would run OK with minimal work and maybe I'd be able to just ride it for the rest of the season before I tear the entire bike apart, but it's looking increasingly like I'll probably just roll it into my back work space and wait a couple months, then tear it apart and clean/inspect/adjust EVERYTHING.
Anyway, if anyone has any immediate suggestions or ideas for me, I'd more than appreciate your input! The only obvious mod on the bike I see is a previous owner switched out the air box for four UNI intake pods. From the little research I've done it sounds like even a change like this can have a major effect on how the bike runs. I'm already planning on syncing the carbs and doing my best to adjust everything to "perfection" and tune the bike in the future, but like I said, I was hoping to maybe just get it running somewhat well and ride it for a bit before I do all the major maintenance (and of course purchase the carb sync vacuum kit).
So, glad to be here and join the community! Can't wait to read more and tear into the bike!
- Mike
