Topic: 1976 Honda CB550

[przjohn]

Prepped the carb plate assembly today. Plated parts and then put a Yellow Chromate finish on the parts that looked that way before. The Yellow parts need to sit a day before working on them as the finish has not set in yet. I don't know why but assume it may be the acid on your hands. All I know is that if you let them sit a day you can handle them without marring the Yellow finish.

The assembly before, you need to drill out the pin on the upper right to disassemble this part.



Parts ready for assembly,

[SOHC4 Cafe Racer Fan]

Nice work!

[przjohn]

Started on left side renovations today and the starter was the place to start. The starter wire had been shorting out so my thinking is this bike was being kick started in it's last days.



I just assumed there was a fitting under the starter grommet, apparently not. It is part of the starter so it was but connected and heat shrunk to new Marine Grade Wire.



This is the cable I like. It is Marine Grade meaning it is Tinned to prevent corrosion and much more pliable that regular wire. You can get it on Ebay per foot for about a buck a foot for 6 and 8 Gauge Wire. You can see the difference between the two in the following photo.






Then it was time to put on a chain. According to experienced riders of these bikes, they don't accept O Ring Chains well. I don't see the wear areas and close dimensions they talk about but I trust their knowledge and will not take any chances with an O Ring, a standard RK - Takasago Chain has been fitted. There was some discussion on a site about direction of the Master Link. Here is a pic of the instructions of the manufacturer showing the closed end moving forward. This is the way I was taught as a dirt bike rider.



Clips VS rivets? I am of the rivet camp. However, this chain being a non O Ring Chain and came with a clip link, I used it. If you are a clip person, this inexpensive Master Link Pliers will make your job much easier.





Also been using some of this inexpensive coiled wire wrap. If you want to protect a wring bundle or just make it look new without cutting into it this stuff works great.



So there is the left side complete. The carbs were waiting for me when I got home today. Back from Restocycle in record turn-a-round time. Of all the vendors I send stuff out to Nils and Restocycle are by far the quickest Turn-a-round. Tomorrow the carbs go back together.

[SOHC4 Cafe Racer Fan]

Good wiring suggestion on the marine cable.  The motor looks very tidy!

[przjohn]

This took me all day. If you look at #4 you will see some rust on the linkage arm that I completely screwed up and didn't notice until I was taking the pics, maybe a senior moment? Nobody will ever see it but will I sleep tonight? The Choke Plate Screws were replaced and Loctited. I then take a side cutting pliers and create a divot in the thread on the back side to mimic the factory method, the Loctite is just for the Halibut.



I also cheated a bit and did not re-plate the 2,3,and 4 choke linkages. They were already adjusted and since they cannot be viewed I opted for some time saving as my goal was to have this rack completed today. I did however re-plate the choke actuating lever.



Honda only sells the Plate/Actuator Assembly as one part, they never meant it to be taken apart, there are 3 left on CSMNL and they are going for telephone numbers. In order to disassemble this linkage you need to drill out a pin on the right side. The problem is that you inevitably drill a too large hole for a new pin. I drilled a new 5/64 hole and put a piece of 5/64 drill bit into the hole and left it just shy of the top of the hole. I then took a punch and pinned the bit with punch marks on the Aluminum above the pin. Just to be sure I also JB Welded over the area. The original hole also got a cover of JB Weld to keep out dust and crap.




Also got some other prep work done. The peg mounts were blasted and painted, here they are hanging to dry. I got an Email Friday telling me that the Chrome had shipped and we should see it Tuesday. Busy weeks coming up and my hope is to be test running within 2 weeks, just waiting on paint which should be soon, fingers are crossed. Thanks for following my build.

[Korven]

It's coming along nicely. What kind of paint did you use on the footpegs?

[przjohn]

It is Rustoleum Gloss Black.

[DanJ]

We going to take these things out for a ride this spring?

[przjohn]

If Spring ever gets here. 

[MauiK3]

Looking forward to seeing this one complete and nominated for BOM!

[przjohn]

Lots of stuff going on, so lots of pics. The Chrome and Paint both came in this week so that sets up a lot of stuff to be assembled. First off was getting the carbs assembled to the manifolds, airbox, and air filter. All new clamps and of course a new filter. Battery box got installed at the same time.





Then came the kick stands and the rear brake linkages, along with new foot peg rubber and springs. The pins were Zinc Plated.







Opened up the David Silver Exhaust and found this guy,



The exhaust instructions were by CMSNL and were as about as useful as tits on a Bull. Since this bike came with a ratted out 4 into one I had nothing to go by for a stock look, I also had to order a David Silver stock mount kit that had these instructions, "Here is your kit, good luck" but that's OK I figured it out. What I didn't figure on was looking at the instructions and reading that they, "Suggest" you replace the rubber equalizers on the mufflers. WTF are Rubber Equalizers? I spend this kind of cash and now you are going to **** me around about a couple of pieces of rubber hose and some clamps, F-U. Went to the hardware store and got a couple of dishwasher to garbage disposal adapters and cut them down. They will work fine for now and I am ordering the correct parts but WTF.







The paint came out prefect! Wayne at K&W Custom Auto in South Windsor CT did a great job, I couldn't be happier. The color is Porsche Speed Yellow and is a great Yellow. I am letting the parts cure for a week in a heated area before I start working on them.



Yes, there are 4 side covers. I like the look of the 77-78 Side Covers and may use those. They will need some tab modification but nothing big. When Wayne saw them he said, "screw it ya got plenty of paint we'll do all four and see what you like"






Will be working on the wiring tomorrow and hopefully will be able to start the motor next weekend.

Thanks for Following Along.

[jakec]

Slow down! I'm trying to catch up.

[Mark1976]

Ya really gotta love it when a stock bike comes back together!!!

[przjohn]

Started on the wiring and the day went slower than I would have hoped. When I laid out the new harness next to the old harness there were 2 differences that screwed me up. The old harness had a Zenor Diode attachment point where the new harness didn't. The new harness had a 5 pin Red plug that the old harness didn't. I wasted some time on what is a simple difference. The new harness from David Silver appears to be for a 75 where they used a thing called a Starter Safety Module, (fancy name for a relay) and in 76 they went to a Zenor Diode for obvious costs savings. In a nutshell either way lets you either have the bike in Neutral or pull in the clutch to engage the starter. The simple fix for this would be to just splice in the Zenor Diode I have into the Yellow/Red and Green/Blue wires, though I may look for a plug and play relay.

The Zenor Diode of the old harness next to the Red plug of the new harness.



Another slow down was trying to mount the new Solid State Rectifier Regulator Combo. I like electronics, they are much more reliable than 40 year old electro mechanical regulators, especially if you are using a Lithium Battery. Problem is there ain't a lot of room under that side cover. Well, after wasting an hour and a half trying to make a bracket that didn't work I took a better look at the real estate. Plenty of room on the other side in the battery box, so the fuse block got moved over there and the RR Combo went in it's place. Always nice to have the side covers available when you do stuff like this to make sure stuff fits.





The fuse block now in the battery box. It will get mounted after the Antigravity Battery comes in this week. There should be no problem room wise with a Lithium.



New Coils, Horn, and Ignition Switch got wired in too.

[Stev-o]

Great work and write up!   A little surprised you are going w/yellow as everything else appears to be stock.
What is the plan for the bike when done?

[przjohn]

Great work and write up!   A little surprised you are going w/yellow as everything else appears to be stock.
What is the plan for the bike when done?

I just don't like the OEM Brown they were made in that year, I also have a thing for Yellow bikes and cars. The only other mod is the handlebars will be low bars and the drilling of the front disc. The bike will be a rider.

[jakec]

Are you still going to do the oem style decals?

[przjohn]

Are you still going to do the oem style decals?

Yes the emblems and decals will be stock

[Stev-o]

Great work and write up!   A little surprised you are going w/yellow as everything else appears to be stock.
What is the plan for the bike when done?

I just don't like the OEM Brown they were made in that year, I also have a thing for Yellow bikes and cars. The only other mod is the handlebars will be low bars and the drilling of the front disc. The bike will be a rider.

Got it, I don't care for the brown either.   I have a project 550 bike with brown bodywork but will get Sunrise Orange paint

[seanbarney41]

Yeah, I like the brown better when it fades to green.

[przjohn]

To keep the wiring going the bars and bar switches got mounted. The Left Side Switch has it's wiring running through the bars so the bars need to be drilled. I have read opinions on not doing this to non OEM bars as it weakens the bars and that the OEM bars were reinforced. I disagree and don't see any sign of reinforcement in the bars I took off that were definitely drilled by some factory. The base clamps on both sides of the 3/8 X 3/4 Inch hole I cut are surely going to secure the bars, in fact if you look at modern street bike bar risers they are 2 piece anyway in this area. Then there's the fact that this is a road bike and we are not thrashing it through the woops of Baja. IMO it is a non issue.

In order to put the low bars on this bike I did something that I did on the 76 CB750F project. The brake line throttle cables are from a 400F. Here is a pic of the 400F brake line installed.



Also needed to restore the meters so those wires could get into the headlight shell. If you are going to restore your meters save some time and buy new rings. You can use either of the tools pictured below to remove your rings, I used the one on the left.



The trip reset switch was broken on the speedo that came with the bike. The casing was damaged too so I got an Ebay speedo but it was a Nippon Seiki and not and ND. Kind of weird as I bought the parts as an assembly with the tach and bracket and the tach was ND? The reset switch would not match up so I used a 15% silver braze to but connect the to parts together.




A before pic of the meters,




And after,



I ordered the wrong battery and am still waiting on some front brake parts from CMSNL that are supposed to be here tomorrow. Hope is to start the bike next weekend then, we'll see. Some more progress pics.

[Can550]

Looking beautiful
Taillight, it’s me or it is actually upside down ?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[przjohn]

Looking beautiful
Taillight, it’s me or it is actually upside down ?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Dolt! There's a Homer moment. That one just flew right by me, thanks for the call.

[jakec]

Now you have to leave it that way.

[przjohn]

Back at the electrical and all was looking well until the start circuit. This took me awhile to figure out. I will try and document it the best I can so that maybe the next guy will have it easier. When you mix reproduction parts on bikes that have Euro and US Specs there are going to be conflicts. Basically this bike came with a Zenor Diode as described previously. The harness came ready to accept the Starter Safety Relay. All the following is to be able to get the bike to use the Neutral Switch or Clutch Switch to start as designed with the reproduction parts that are available. It is not a hard to perform modification.

Here is a diagram of the mod, sorry for my poor graphics.



The Green and Red (G/R) wire coming from the starter solenoid will ground directly in the new reproduction harness making the safety circuit useless. If you don't care about that you are good to go, grab a beer and skip this tutorial.

Cut out the Red Molex connector that went to the Starter Safety Relay and cap all wires except the G/R and the LG/R (Light Green and Red) . Disconnect and cap the G/R wire from the Molex Connector on the electrical panel to the Starter Solenoid. Take the G/R from the Solenoid and route it to connect to the G/R from the Clutch Switch that was on the Red Molex Plug and the G/R from the Zenor Diode. The LG/R on the Diode gets connected to the LG/R that was on the Red Molex Plug. Some pics,

Dead end and cap the Male fitting shown here that comes from the Molex Plug on the electrical panel. Make a new G/R from the Solenoid, ( about 10" long) shown here as a completed plug.



Bring that wire to meet the G/R from the Clutch Switch and the G/R to the Diode shown here is the 3 way connection. Connect the LG/R that was connected to the Red Molex Connector and connect to the diode.



When you take a minute and look at it, this mod takes a few minutes at best.

Since the bars are now lower the clutch cable had to be shortened 120MM



I've got 2 great kits for cables but honestly, 90% of what we normally do can be done with just the Motion Pro Kit. The Venhill Kit can reproduce just about cable.




Measure twice cut once. The end of the cable gets a slight fray to hold it in to the new cable end.




It is then dipped into my solder pot that is nothing more that a 1-1/4" end cap with solder in it. It gets heated by the torch for like 1 minute until the solder melts.



You end up with a perfect factory looking cable end.



Electronic Ignition is installed and timed.



The new Antigravity Battery got installed today.



And then the Gremlins came home. Went to spin the motor with no plugs to circulate oil, it screeched and screamed like hell. WTF? The motor has been consistently turned over by hand smooth as silk. Hit the button again and this time it sounded like the motor seized. Grabbed the 23MM Socket and manually turned the motor over with ease, no motor seized. Took Starter Motor off and did what I should have done in the beginning, Bench Test It. The starter motor is farked and I am going to figure out the best way to deal with that. Was hoping to start the bike this weekend but I ain't no kicker.



Got the front brake finished and started on the seat. I am cheating here and using a David Silver Repro Seat as the pan of this one is doo doo bengata. The problem I ran into is that the PO of this bike must have done some seat work as the seat has been recovered and foam modified, guess he didn't think having a seat latch was a big deal. The big problem for me was that the parts I bought for the latch/lock don't even come close to fitting up. Went to Ebay and found the bracket I am missing. Hoping I can still use these once the bracket comes in.




Started to mock up the tank and have a choice between 2 emblems. The first is the Gold Border Emblem and the second is the Black Border Emblem. I am open to opinions on which to use.







Some progress pics,







Thanks for following along with my project.