Topic: Marissa's 1972 CB500

[RAFster122s]

You can get chromate conversions in clear which sometimes gives you the blue finish, a yellow chromate, and the black chromate conversion.  Zinc plated is good enough for the carbs and you are not going to be exposing it to tons of corrosives. Fellow in Canada who rides his bike in the winter, it is a winter hack with sidecar and enclosed canopy for the side car goes through fasteners every few years but the bike's fasteners were just zinc'd without chromate conversion.

[seanbarney41]

Damn, so glad all these respected people spoke up.  Let those carbs act their age.  The INSIDES have to be clean.

[DaveBarbier]

I’m not sold on the mains needing to go up to 125. My 550 had 110’s with pods and velocity stacks. I honestly didn’t feel any difference going from UNI pods to stacks. But either way, it would be really nice if you went to a dyno to help tune. There’s a really great guy in New Milford and it’s a beautiful ride up there. It’s like $65 for three pulls and the guy loves older bikes. He did a few extra for me. I went to him a handful of times. He doesn’t know carbs all that well and he doesn’t tune your bike, he mainly does the electronic programming tuning stuff. But just having the graph and knowing what the a/f ratio is at a given throttle position is very handy.
John Dyno Solutions
203-470-5458

Also, email Dmitry Slootskin. He’s a vapor blaster in RI I think. dslootskin@cox.net
He did my 650 stuff and is very reasonable. It came out slightly more matte than I’ve seen but show him a picture of the finish you want and he’ll get you going.
My vapor blasted clutch cover on the left. My patina treatment to the shift cover on the right.


That rotor cover looks very nice! I like the patina personally, maybe that’s obvious...

[RAFster122s]

It seems everyone has a little different mix on vapor blasting and results can vary greatly between different "blasters"  
Nil's seems to have a following on here as his work is consistent and unlike many others I have seen. I think I like what Nils does best of everything I've seen. But, I have a polishing addiction I sometimes feed, so vapor blasting will not give you patina....like polishing removes a lot of patina.  You seem to like patina you can control like an artist, am I right?

Maybe pick up a spare cover from someone...a cover that needs some help cosmetically so you can play around with parts that are not your bike's parts but could be used on your bike if you figure out a technique to get your desired look.
Scotchbrite pads give some patina to parts that a wire brush will definitely give a brushed look. Unless using expensive (rotary...as in grinder, bench buffer/grinder, etc.) brass brushes.  Glass beading give a different look depending upon size of bead and sand blasting can give you a very pitted surface if you go too coarse on the grit.  Vapor blasting has the advantage over glass bead that it peens the surface which gives it some protection that ages slowly as long as you aren't exposing it to winter salt and leaving that corrosive substance on the bike.
Vapor blasted surfaces can be left natural without the aluminum splotching and oxidation variation that shows up on a sand blasted or glass beaded surface.

Most vapor blasters will not reveal what their slurry is that they use to blast parts with...the wet blasting changes the way a blast media reacts with the material.

[HondaMan]

M:
About those 'spots' on the slides: I just polish it off. I start with Scotchbrite, then 3000 grit paper if needed, steel wool, or the like. They just need to slide smoothly in their carb tunnels. The 500/550 carbs are notorious for warping those tunnels, making them stick the slides above 1/2 throttle, and 2000 grit will push the warped portion back enough to make them smooth again, too.

[754]

I have 12 inch scotchbrite wheels, give a good brushed finish.
They are out there, but hard to find the proper name. . I think deburring wheels or linishing  I think it was .
 Kbc has them in the cataloge, but a big hard to find cause the  proper name.
 I found mine on ebay. Had a quick look , not easy to find.
 The ones that look like  a grindstone , are everywhere but expensive.

[Cb750 Racer]

I’m not sold on the mains needing to go up to 125. My 550 had 110’s with pods and velocity stacks. I honestly didn’t feel any difference going from UNI pods to stacks. But either way, it would be really nice if you went to a dyno to help tune. There’s a really great guy in New Milford and it’s a beautiful ride up there. It’s like $65 for three pulls and the guy loves older bikes. He did a few extra for me. I went to him a handful of times. He doesn’t know carbs all that well and he doesn’t tune your bike, he mainly does the electronic programming tuning stuff. But just having the graph and knowing what the a/f ratio is at a given throttle position is very handy.
John Dyno Solutions
203-470-5458

Also, email Dmitry Slootskin. He’s a vapor blaster in RI I think. dslootskin@cox.net
He did my 650 stuff and is very reasonable. It came out slightly more matte than I’ve seen but show him a picture of the finish you want and he’ll get you going.
My vapor blasted clutch cover on the left. My patina treatment to the shift cover on the right.


That rotor cover looks very nice! I like the patina personally, maybe that’s obvious...

Thank you for the referral. He'll definitely be getting a call this spring once I finish up the Turbo billet block cb, 65$ for 3 runs is hard to beat and I have a good feeling he'll like what I bring by 

 Strange you didn't have to change jetting when you switched to the velocity stacks they must have had some pretty fine screens. 125 may be a bit large I gauged the mains off a buddies big bore 592. The pilot/needle position should be close regardless but a dyno session will certainly tell you better info on your specific application than me

[Marissa]

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to give a quick update:

I am still working on the bike and making progress with smaller bits. I've been really busy with school and I haven't had too much motivation to work in the freezing temps on the weekend.

Unfortunately, Flickr sucks big time. I exported a lot of my photos since Flickr is clearing out photos that exceed 1000+ on free accounts. Because I'm a cheap college kid, I went through most of them as I don't plan on paying $50 to do the same thing I used to all these years, and I think Google Photos is free unlimited anyways.

Long story short, since Flickr never really worked right/or fast with loading the pages or scrolling through images, I guess my photo count didn't update even after I refreshed it 5 times and come to find out most of my forum images were deleted when I didn't have to delete that far back.

So yeah. Now my build page sucks big time. Really sorry about this.

I still have these photos on my computer, but I personally don't think it's worth relinking every single one. At some point, I would like to go through it and reupload general photos that cover the gist, but for now this build page is ruined and I'm real upset lol.

I hope to have *new* photos to show you guys soon!

-Marissa

[RAFster122s]

You can upload directly to the site if you wish to keep the thread active and viable, rather than using Flicks or Photo_ucket...

[PeWe]

I always upload direct to the post. Photos compressed to around 80-200kB, sometimes a little more if needed.

[MauiK3]

I upload directly too, have to watch file size.
Keep up the good work, school is more important of course but your build is food for the soul. I was just wondering if you were still on it. Good to hear you are out there, stay warm!!

[RAFster122s]

Marissa is an artist, thus she is wired to have and need creative outlet. Classes are doing this some But, wrenching and building the bike scratches a different itch...

[Bankerdanny]

I upload directly too, have to watch file size.
Keep up the good work, school is more important of course but your build is food for the soul. I was just wondering if you were still on it. Good to hear you are out there, stay warm!!

The photo size limit was upgraded a little while back to 4mb, more than enough for a high res photo. I never bothered with photobucket or other such sites before and there definitely isn't any reason to use it now.

[DaveBarbier]

Definitely a bummer, I host most of my photos on the tapatalk app. Hope I don’t run into the same problem eventually.

[Marissa]

You can upload directly to the site if you wish to keep the thread active and viable, rather than using Flicks or Photo_ucket...

RAF, how do you do so? So far I've tried clicking the "insert image" option, pasting in the image address in, and no luck lol. I'm completely inept at these things haha.

[jgger]

I just hit the attachment button below the text box in reply. Ezpz!

[Marissa]

Jggr,

That's a great way of going about it. I tried using the image gallery for the first couple of posts but I had to condense all my images to upload.

Anyways, here's my progress. For now I'll add the rest of the photos I have in Flickr that I've been stashing away for this update.

I thought about the feedback you guys gave me, and I realized I could just have my boyfriend paint the carbs at work. So we took one of the prismatic powder samples that I picked out and he was able to recreate the texture and get the tone pretty close. But I haven't given him the carbs yet so that's that.



The nutserts Ive been using from the local hardware store are total junk, so we used an astro pneumatic at work with the nutserts that came with that and those are now in the seat pan for the hinge. I also recovered the bottom of the pan.





I've been working on making a new steering stem. It's probably just going to be decoration and I probably won't end up using it but:







Looks like there was some deformation in the wax burnout process. I'm going to throw it on the lathe at school to clean it.

I refinished the side cover and extra fuse holder I made.







I sized down that ring I made, but I found out the improper fitment was actually from the weight of the handlebars pulling the ring back



I hung out at Madhouse Motors in Boston over winter break and got to help prep the RE Indian (Foot Throttle) for the unveiling at the New Tradition Motorcycle show. The show was super cool and the building was killer. It was mainly about old school choppers, mostly Harleys, but it was so badass and a very authentic show.









Super cool stuff. In CT, we don't have much of a scene like this.

As some of you may know, Dave did a fork upgrade on his bike, and he actually offered me his old 550 set up. This couldn't have worked better as now I don't have to worry about that sketchy damper rod that I "fixed", and it seems 550 forks have a few more part options. These fork tubes are also nearly mint which is awesome! And, now I have a dual disc assembly. Sure hope I never grab that brake lever too hard, lol.

The infamous Patina Hyena!



The black oxide was just not going to work on my bike, sorry Dave  So I sanded them down, and filed the rough casting edges down to clean them up.









Working on polishing them up. Also, here's a visual comparison of 500 vs 550 forks. The lower bodies are taller, but the actual whole fork assemblies seem to be the same height. I remember when I was looking into this and getting confused by the info I found, so I hope maybe this is helpful to someone. And yes I have the wrong side fork held up to the right side, but you get the idea. Thanks again Dave!







That's pretty much it for now. I'm likely going to convert to clip ons and do something with the triple tree and gauges, not sure what yet though. I truly love the OE gauges and what not.

[DaveBarbier]

Hey, I recognize that bike And you can see frost on my tank and everything, haha.

Nice! Yeah, do something with those lowers. Black oxide wouldn’t work on your bike.

[Marissa]

Been tweaking some parts for my new front end set up.



I didn't want to get rid of the "idiot lights", because I love the OEM character of them. With the shaved triple tree though, they definitely looked dorky and out of place. So as of current, I bought a janky one off eBay and I've been shaping it to fit between the oe speedo and tach locations. This way here it fills in the massive gap between them while hopefully still looking OEM to the untrained eye. Right now it's almost ready for paint, just needs some more shaping and cleaning.



I also am modifying the shaved triple tree, and I cut out 1/8" thick aluminum to fill the holes from the casting. We're gonna tig weld it at work, file the welds down a bit to make it all flush, and paint it. I also thought about stamping letters into it but I need to test that out first.
 


Here's a look at the steering stem nut I made. We silicon brazed it at work, we sleeved the OE threads into the piece, so hypothetically it should be just as strong as any OE nut. I'm probably crazy for wanting to run it but it threads on great so we'll see what happens. Lol. The brazing was filed down a bit after this picture to sit flush.





I finally prepped the carbs for paint. These are gonna be degreased again, and hopefully done soon. I bagged and tagged all the carb hardware for "Blue Chromate" "Yellow Chromate" and just pieces that need soda blasting. It's gonna be a while until I have my media blaster set up, because we are renovating my little corner in the garage, but I found an all steel 7' workbench for $50 that I'm gonna have for storage and a place for the blaster and hopefully a lathe at some point. But anyways, once I have that set up I'm going to blast them, zinc plate them again, and put chromate on them.



Still doing casting stuff at school. I've been working on footpeg designs and trying to find a good technique. No real luck so far but I'm getting close lol.

[DaveBarbier]

Good stuff! That top but isn’t torqued that much so you should be fine. Most nowadays are aluminum anyway. Going to add spacers so the rising sun is oriented correctly when tight?

[Marissa]

Good stuff! That top but isn’t torqued that much so you should be fine. Most nowadays are aluminum anyway. Going to add spacers so the rising sun is oriented correctly when tight?

That's the plan, I haven't been able to test it to see where it lands so far but I'm hoping it'll be close lol.

[Marissa]

Carbs are painted! My boyfriend is a painter and I'm really stoked on the textured finish and tonality. Once he gave them back I came up with the idea of having Keihin in gold, so I took out my pinstriping brush (for the first time, bought it three years ago lol!) and put some gold on. I dig it!



His work has a lot of cool equipment, they do design prototyping. He also bead blasted the float bowls for me, mine were in seriously rough shape even after cleaning them with what ways I could. Currently working on polishing them and I'm gonna get them clear coated once that's done.



Converted the black anodized clip ons to polished. This took FOREVER to get through the finish surprisingly.





Sandcasted some aluminum exhaust clamps. I don't know if these will end up being too soft or weak, but I wanted to get more experience sand casting and the aluminum was free! Didn't change the design as I originally wanted to do them in bronze, but I couldn't pass up free aluminum and try out the weight savings. Will put them on a scale at some point.









Dual disc conversion is awaiting front end reassembly, which is waiting for the triple tree to be painted and finished.



Here's a photo of how the carbs look  with the engine in poor shaded florescent lighting, lol



Triple tree welded, filed, need to touch up a few spots but here's photos of mock ups. Keep in mind I modified one set of the "idiot gauges", but those were waiting for paint so I mocked up my original one instead to get a vague idea.





My boyfriend has had the bug for a bike since he met me, and he finally pulled the trigger on a 550 just like me, only this is a Suzuki GS550. Believe me when I said we looked for Hondas and could not find any good ones in the price range. This one was $2200 and is ready to go!



I am jealous he has a running bike before I do, lol. His also matches his car which is a '68 Chevy Biscayne with a turbo LS.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2fkVFso]

That's it for now.

[calj737]

Be careful with the sandcast clamps. They will be a tad weaker than the steel, and you need to make sure the threads are less engaged and coated with antisieze lest you fuse them on forever.

[MauiK3]

very cool sandcasting.

[SOHC4 Cafe Racer Fan]

The carbs look pretty.  I previously had mine painted black but the paint has since flaked off with exposure to gasoline.  I am going to have them cerakoted the next time I rebuild them.