Hello all, I have a 1979 CB650 which, not coincidentally, was my first bike as a skinny 20-year-old. This particular bike I purchased in 2011, fixed up a few things, painted the tank, and sold to a young couple. It had about 9000 miles on it. A friend had made me a new leather seat for it.
Browsing Kijiji one day, I did a double-take when I recognized that old bike and the seat, now being sold for parts. I went and took a look and it was in sorry shape. Had been left outside by the looks of it for the past seven years. Apart from four broken turn signals it seemed complete and nothing was bent where it shouldn't have been. It had no ownership or keys. Got it for $360.00 Imagine my surprise when I obtained the used vehicle information package and found it was still registered in my name!
I've always worked on my own bikes. This site has been a huge help in assisting me with the peculiarities of the 650s.
So far I've
-Replaced the ignition
-Replaced front master cylinder and caliper
-replaced both tires
-replaced sprockets and chain
-replaced the turn signals
-new fork oil
-oil change and filter
-cleaned the tank
-cleaned the carbs (without pulling the slow jets) They were not in terrible shape
-disassembled the speedo and tach to straighten the needles during which I broke the tach needle
-vacuum-synched the carbs
-adjusted the valves
-checked the timing
-checked the coils and that all plugs are getting a park
-adjusted the floats (only 1, actually)
So here are my issues:
Minor- two-wire aftermarket rear turn signals are turning on with ignition. Everything wired correctly so not sure how this is happening. Only the three-wire fronts are supposed to be running lights.
Major- Cylinders number three and four are not heating up the pipes. Plugs on one and two are textbook tan. Three is a bit better than four's plug which has a bit of black easily wiped-off carbon but doesn't really look used. This was the carb than needed the float adjusted as it was filling too high. I also have a stumbling around 6,500-7000k rpm now and it won't rev higher. Somewhere along the way I had it revving strongly to 8,000 so I'm not sure where I went backwards. I do have a new air filter on order but the old, probably original one doesn't look terrible.
Three's pipe gets hotter than four but not as hot as 1 and 2. Occasionally there has been a bit of white smoke out of the right side muffler.
11,000 miles seems a bit newish for ring problems. At this point all I can think of is to re-check the valves but I did them very carefully with my wife checking things as I went along.
Any suggestions would be welcomed.
Dave, Toronto, Canada
