Topic: Terry's Effing F2, return of the prodigal SOHC4?

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks guys, well it was a magnificent (almost) spring day today again, sunny and almost warm. My intent was to pull the pan and oil pump, and give them a clean, clean up the clutch, stick on the carbs, fill it with oil and make some noise. Well, that didn't happen, but I'm way closer than I was. My problem is I kept noticing missing parts, so spent more time ratting thru my parts bins and finding the parts I needed before I could move on to the nitty gritty. The original chain guard was very much like the tail light, rooted. I found another one that had been painted, but it was still better than what I had, so I put it on

Terry’s Effing F2 29 Aug 2020 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I also installed the sprocket cover, using genuine rusty Honda screws, to match the rest.

Terry’s Effing F2 29 Aug 2020 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

It was starting to look like a nice original rat.

Terry’s Effing F2 29 Aug 2020 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I was missing the choke cable and bracket and couldn't find one in any of my tubs, so Spotty's poor old K7 got ratted again, along with the throttle assembly including cables. I still had my cables, but they were rusted in place, and no amount of WD40 was gonna unstick them. It was a good thing I did too, as I'd forgotten that the last of the CB750's had big plastic plugs instead of individual wire connectors like the K1-K6. At least I didn't have to test my poor color vision and work out which wires were connected to where, like I usually do.

Terry’s Effing F2 29 Aug 2020 9b by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I've ordered a new front master cylinder, but when I found a really clean K2 item, I had to give it a try. In Cliff's box I even found the OEM hand grips, slightly chewed, but they kind of matched everything else.

Terry’s Effing F2 29 Aug 2020 3 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr 

Next problem was the headlight's chrome rim. It, like all the other chrome, was knackered. No problem, I had a tub full of old Honda headlights, so I pulled them out but found that one of them fit? Then I had  that "Aha!" moment, when I realised that the headlight wasn't original! another pointer that it might be my old beast, as I'd mentioned previously, the bike had a big touring style fairing on it when it was traded in, and the mechanic told me that they'd taken it off as it was pretty ugly, so I'm guessing that they threw on an aftermarket headlight. Luckily, once again I had Cliff's OEM headlight shell, so found a half decent rim,and shoved all the wiring into it and gave the headlight ears a cleanup with some stainless steel wool, added some shiny new stainless mounting bolts, and called it good.

Terry’s Effing F2 29 Aug 2020 4 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Ok, so I'd kind of run out of things I had no intention of doing when I'd wandered out 4 or 5 hours earlier, so I finally got down and dropped the pan. Happily, there was nothing in it but a bit of a build up of black oily goop, but nothing creamy or watery, and best of all, no metal. I took a pic up the F2.2's skirt (mechanical "upskirting"?) and was impressed by how clean it looked.

Terry’s Effing F2 29 Aug 2020 5 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Terry’s Effing F2 29 Aug 2020 7 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Much cleaner than the swamp rat engine, and several other engines I've had apart in recent times. I filled my little tub with stale gas and flushed it thru the pump and it felt that everything was working fine, so sprayed some degreaser thru, then filled it with oil and pumped it around the, er, pump, and re-installed it, and the pan. I also dropped the oil filter and discovered that the spring and washer were missing, so ratted around in the garage and found some of Spotty's spare engine bits, so once again righted a previous owners wrongs.

Terry’s Effing F2 29 Aug 2020 6 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

By now I was getting a bit tired, but I wanted to pull the clutch before I packed up for the night. Happily my JIS screwdrivers have been very successful in removing all of the "Cheese Head" Honda screws, so it didn't take too long to get them all out and the cover off. Many years ago I ground a socket to make the clutch nut removal tool, so putting the bike in gear and leaning it on it's sidestand so as to lock the clutch. I used the socket and my rattlegun to remove the nut, and then pulled the inner hub, and separated all the plates that were well and truly glued together after sitting for 10 years, or so. While most of the friction plates were in pretty good condition, a couple were delaminating, so tomorrow I'll have a rat thru my large collection of clutch plates and find some better ones.

Terry’s Effing F2 29 Aug 2020 9 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Unlike the Swamprats steel basket though, once again, not a skerrick of rust or gunge, so I was pretty happy with that.

Terry’s Effing F2 29 Aug 2020 8 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

By this time I was tired, thirsty, and it was getting dark. It's not gonna rain overnight, so I left everything out where I'd dropped it, ready to go again tomorrow. I did put a bike cover over it just to keep the spiders out, but all going well, the clutch will be back together tomorrow morning, and I'll be able to fill the bike with oil, and start thinking about carbs and ignition. All going well, the bike might even be running by end of play. Sweet...........

Terry’s Effing F2 29 Aug 2020 9a by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr       

[spotty]

have a look at the M/C on my K7, if its a honda one i think its a brand new one that we put on when it as originally converted to something less arse ugly than that which mr honda gave the nod to all those years ago, might be worth using , if its a vmax one can i have it back please......i may also have put the vmax clutch M/C on as i was planning to change it to hydraulic

i really can't remember if they are on there

however nice work so far, good to see that some of the old K7 lives on and is keeping something else going, i think those throttle cables were new too

it will be nice , hopefully , in a couple of weeks to be able to get out and see your new toy in person

[PeWe]

That engine look good Terry!
Look like a good runner. Have you looked under the cam holders?
With cut frame easy to remove cam holders, oil filter and rinse the oil feed. Reseal rubber coins, re-torque head nuts. Back with the rockers.This small extra maintenance to ensure no bad news and leaks.

[Terry in Australia]

have a look at the M/C on my K7, if its a honda one i think its a brand new one that we put on when it as originally converted to something less arse ugly than that which mr honda gave the nod to all those years ago, might be worth using , if its a vmax one can i have it back please......i may also have put the vmax clutch M/C on as i was planning to change it to hydraulic

i really can't remember if they are on there

however nice work so far, good to see that some of the old K7 lives on and is keeping something else going, i think those throttle cables were new too

it will be nice , hopefully , in a couple of weeks to be able to get out and see your new toy in person

Thanks Spotty, the MC on the K7 is your Yamaha VMax one, and at the time we did the trade we agreed that you'd get it back mate, it's got a particularly fetching aftermarket lever on it, and I have no use for it. Next time you're over, remind me and I'll sling it back. There was a bit of surface rust on the throttle cables and they definitely don't look new, but that's fine, anything that good would look odd on my F2 rat.

I've been thru your tubs of parts and there were no other master cylinders, I was hoping there'd be a stock K7 one, but nada.No biggie, I'll give that brake bleeder thingy that you recommended a go on the K2's MC today, and see if I can get a nice firm lever, as we all know, a firm lever is a "thing" of beauty.......

Per, that top end inspection sounds like a good idea, I won't do it today because I won't have time to get everything done and make fire, but I'll certainly do that sometime soon, although I need to keep in mind that I want my Z1 finished ASAP, so I can't afford to spend too much more time on the F2 before I park it again and do some Kawasaki creating.

Everything looks so clean I'm not at all worried about firing it up today, with all the covers I've removed I haven't seen any silicon anywhere, no water in the oil, and all the screws are original which is unusual because here in Oz just about every "Home mechanic" changed them to allen screws back in the day, so apart from it's tatty appearance, it appears to have been a well maintained, original bike. I even found the original exhaust system's mounting bracket in the tub of parts that Rob had taken off it, so it still had the original exhaust right up until this year.

Of course, if it explodes this afternoon, I'll take all that back........

[Terry in Australia]

So, today was almost warm, but overcast and windy, and rain was on the way. I got out of bed early (for a sunday) made a delicious egg, bacon and cheese wrap, and a big cup of coffee, then headed outside, to the mess I left from yesterday. Of course, the first job I should have done was reassemble the clutch, but as usual, I got sidetracked and started looking for an exhaust. Unlike the mighty K0-K2, the F2 has different exhaust clamps, and some inner clamps that push the headers into the head. I farted around going thru various tubs of parts, but without ratting Spotty's K7 again, I didn't have enough bits to mount some OEM (but ratty) F2 headers. No matter, I had bigger fish to fry if I wanted to make some noise.

I reassembled the clutch, and once again, farted around in various tubs looking for a non rusted clutch cable. I couldn't understand why, with lower bars fitted than the OEM "High bars", all of my spare clutch cables appeared to be too short? It turns out that the OEM "long" cable had been re-routed to avoid having a big piece of cable swinging in the breeze. Anyway, I eventually found a good cable, and checked the clutch's operation, and it worked perfectly. Woohoo!.

The carbs that came with the bike had nice clean bowls, and what appears to be a spare set of rubber insulators. Sadly the rubber insualtors turned out to be way too big, and all the OEM ones were cracked. Fcuk. Well desperation is the mother-fcuker of invention, so I looked around and found some K7 rubbers (thanks to Spotty's spare K7 engine) and discovered that if i boiled the sh1t out of them, I could force them onto the larger F2's spigots. I then used Steve's method of using a piece of 1" x 2" timber to lever the carbs into the rubbers, while tapping them into place with a plastic mallet. look Ma, no clamps!

Terry’s Effing F2 30 Aug 2020 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Okay, coils. I found a set that I'd used to get the Swamprat running last year. Rough, ratty, but I know they worked, so I installed them.

Terry’s Effing F2 30 Aug 2020 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

OK, coils, plugs, carbs, hell I installed the tank with a new piece of fuel hose, tipped in 5 litres of fresh gas, and then remembered I hadn't put any oil in it, so I found a couple of containers of oil, and filled the oil tank. Usually I remove the oil plug near the points cover and fill the oilway with oil, and kick the engine over a million times to make sure the oil is circulating, but as it was getting dark and starting to rain, I just installed a battery and realising that the fuse box is stuffed, hotwired straight to the coils, and hit the button.

Yay, it runs! OK, I decided to leave Spotty's K7 alone so I can turn it into a cool street scrambler and sell it to some young man-bun wearing dildo, so I've ordered a new Delkevic pipe and new repro coils, and hopefully I won't have to spend much more on this rat to turn it into a nice daily rider for the coming summer months. So far I've bought a new front MC, a used seat, the Delkevic exhaust and new coils. If that gets me through a roadworthy inspection, I'll be a happy boy. If you look at the pic of the F2 with the delkevic pipe and squint your eyes, it looks just like my bike! More soon...........

Terry's Effing F2 Delkevic pipe by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr   

 
       

[PeWe]

I hope your bike will look like that!
The red candy close to CBX1000 had late 70's look really good on an F2, stock decals.

[SOHC4 Cafe Racer Fan]

Nice job reviving the F2, Terry. You must have a treasure trove of parts.

[seanbarney41]

Thats the feeling lots of us are here for!

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks guys, and yes Sean, it was a great feeling to be the first person in 10 years to see/hear this thing running again, and made the hours spent reviving it well worth it.

I've got a "to do" list that needs to happen before I can think about actually riding it, the carbs were absolutely pissing fuel so I'd tun the petcock to "on", fill the float bowls to overflowing (tapping with an adjustable wrench made no difference at all) turn the fuel off, let the overflow dry, then run it until the fuel in the bowls ran out. Luckily for me Jona Oron (a member here from Haifa, Israel) sent me a heap of small parts last year when I gave him a carb for his Harley, and in his bag of treasures was 4 carb rebuild kits, which will be handy.

I haven't bothered flushing and bleeding the brakes as yet as I ordered a new front MC and hopefully, unlike the K2 MC I put on it on the weekend, it'll have an inbuilt brake light switch like the F2's, saving me the trouble of rigging a non standard front brake light switch. The rear MC is seized solid, and my collection of F2 rear MC's all showed the same problem, so I might have to engineer something using a cheap (new) chinese MC I have out in the garage, for the time being. I haven't checked the valve clearances yet either, or set the ignition timing, and I'm trying to decide whether to fit my Hondaman ignition box, or my new Kokusan electronic ignition. Hopefully the new Delkevic exhaust will arrive this week, which will really help, I can't do any tuning without an exhaust system.

I need to order a new air filter. I won't bother with a high flow K&N like I do on my "K" series bikes, F2's run lean in standard trim, so I'd have to mess with the jetting, and to be honest, I couldn't be bothered, I'll be happy to just run it stock. I'd forgotten about tyres when i was going thru the list of things I needed to buy, so I can see a set of new Stinko's in it's future, the 20 year old Metzlers don't look all that bad apart from the fact that they're as hard as granite, so some new rubber will be a bonus, hell, I might even change the fork oil and grease the swingarm bushes! No biggie, I'm still waiting on Kawasaki parts, so I've got a little more time to play with the old prodigal F2...........

[Terry in Australia]

Well I didn't have a lot of time to play with bikes after I knocked off work today, but I'd been quite excited that a parcel that I'd ordered from Queensland was gonna be delivered today. Woohoo, my new delkevic exhaust! No, as it turned out, it was the new front brake master cylinder. Oh well, that was still a step forward, until i opened the box and discovered that it didn't have a brake light switch, or the ability to install mine. Bugger.

Terry's Effing F2 brakes 1 Sep 2020 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Oh well, I'd bought a brake light pressure switch that comes with it's own banjo bolt that you can either bolt to your MC or a caliper, but after pulling all of my 6 tubs of Kawasaki parts out and going through them with a fine tooth comb, I couldn't find it. Damn. I couldn't see much point in removing the K2 front master I installed on the weekend as it doesn't appear to be leaking, so I put the new one in a parts tub, and decided to flush the system with new brake fluid and bleed the brakes, and worry about the brake light switch later. 

Unlike the rest of the CB750's, the F2 has some half decent front calipers, and mine looked pretty good. I eventually found the air compressor operated brake flushing system that Spotty recommended, and after reading the first line of the instruction page, decided that I knew more than enough to make it work, and of course, I was (almost) right. I cracked the first 8mm bleed screw and was pissed off that it was plugged, so did what any half-arser would do, I used Spotty's sucker to suck fresh fluid down from the MC and out through the bleed screw's threaded hole. I then just screwed the plugged bleed screw back in, and moved to the next caliper.

If I was pissed off with the plugged bleed screw on the right caliper, I was gutted when the bleed screw in the left caliper casually just snapped in half. Fcuk. Now if this had happened 40 years ago when I was restoring my first K1, I probably would have burst into tears, with no decent tools, no workshop, and no spares. Back then the old K1 was a "rolling resto", it was my only mode of transport, I needed to ride it to and from work every day so I'd ride it by day, and improve(?) it by night. Nowadays it's not such an issue, I have lots of vehicles (not that I can ride/drive anywhere right now anyway) lots of tools, lots of parts, and a tad more patience. I remembered finding a tub full of F2 brake parts left over from the red F2's resto many years ago, so I dragged it out, and the first caliper I pulled out was the correct left side caliper, woohoo!

Surprisingly I had the broken caliper off and the new(old) one on in just a couple of minutes, and I was also able to see that the pads were like new, bonus! Hopefully they're the good old asbestos ones that actually work! The bleed screw was plugged as well, but I managed to bleed the brakes really easy using Spotty's sucking machine, and once I tightened the bleed screw I was rewarded with a nice firm lever. By this time it was getting dark, and I had a mess to clean up. I used some spray on degreaser to wash the brake fluid off the calipers and the rim, discs and MC, then hosed that off with clean water, so hopefully it won't have affected the paint it may have dripped on. Of course I'd managed to spray everything with the garden hose, so I decided to fire the engine up to dry it off. (plus I wanted to fire the engine up) It ran fine, and the carbs weren't dripping as bad as a couple of days ago, so hopefully the float valves are starting to work again.

Terry's Effing F2 brakes 1 Sep 2020 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I came in and sat in my chair and took a swig on my bottle of ginger beer. I looked across at the little chest of drawers beside my comfy chair and noticed a little box sitting on top. I opened it, and found this. Fcuk............

Terry's Effing F2 brakes 1 Sep 2020 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr 

[spotty]

best place to hide the switch banjo is on the splitter on the bottom triple clamp

i've got one on the vmax that i had to install when i put forward controls on which involved getting rid of the original switch.
it works as well or better than the old one as it doesn't depend on pulling a little spring which in turn pulls the rod bit in the switch,
as soon as you press the brake pedal the fluid pressure does the job nicely.
it also looks better as its more hidden than the original piece of cr@p hanging above the brake pedal, doesn't get covered in road filth so will last longer and won't get full of water when it rains ( or god forbid i actually wash the bike )

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks Spotty, well of course i'm reading this now after coming in for the night after doing more brake work on the F2, so like most things in my life I'm a day late and a dollar short. I installed the switch on the end of the K2 MC then re-bled the brakes at the MC and at the calipers, and have a nice firm lever again, but didn't have time to pull the headlight apart and connect the wires to see if it actually works, but I think it should be fine.

Terry's Effing F2 brakes 2 Sep 2020 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

My worst fears were unfounded. The rear brake pedal was frozen and I assumed that the rear MC was seized with corrosion and would need replacing, but it turned out that once I put a little pressure on the pedal (OK, I stood on it) it broke free, and I actually had some pedal! Using Spotty's "Suck-o-matic" I emptied the caliper, but it didn't draw the fluid from the reservoir, so I used the pedal to push it through while operating the "Suck-Master" to pull the rusty old poop out of the caliper. This worked pretty well, and eventually fresh fluid came out of the caliper, so I did a quick bleed, got a nice hard pedal, and called it good.

I celebrated by firing it up again, but I really need to pull the carbs off and re-build them as they're still dripping, so the float valves are likely all buggared, and I think the seals in the accelerator pump are shot too. I did operate the clutch with the bike on the centrestand and the engine running and it works perfectly, and I even went right thru the gears, all good. I did think about riding it up and down the driveway, but then I thought about the fuel dripping onto the hot engine, and decided that I wouldn't push my luck, just for a change. Tomorrow I'm gonna play with the electrics, the tail light needs to be re-wired, the rear indicators need to be installed, I need to find a flasher can, connect the front brake light switch, and replace/repair the fuse box so I can remove my hotwire.

Hopefully the exhaust and coils will have arrived by the weekend, as the weather is supposed to be pretty nice, maybe I can go for a sneaky lap around the block........    

[Trevor from Warragul]

Do I spy a can of Supercheap Auto Export Degreaser? Great stuff, doesn't stuff up the aluminium...

[spotty]

If I have contributed nothing else to this forum I can sleep sound knowing I have given my name to a truly great nipple sucking , fluid guzzling device - the Spotty Suck-O-Matic

[RAFster122s]

Spotty you should sell them...
Haha

[Terry in Australia]

Yep, credit where it's due, Spotty put me on to this device, and while the Effing F2.2 was a challenge in that there was more rust than there was brake fluid in either the front or rear brake systems, it worked pretty well. The "Suck Meister" was really cheap too, so Spotty could probably re-brand these fine Chinese devices and re-sell them at twice the price, at least?

Well sadly I got no bike stuff done today, apart from the weather turning from a beautiful sunny spring day to a fairly miserable windy overcast affair, I got caught up in a work related email marathon, so as I'm wheeling the old hulk out into the driveway to do the work I just ran out of time today. That's fine, Rome wasn't built in a day apparently, so hopefully I'll get some more stuff done tomorrow.

[dave500]

ive got one of those suckometers,was cheap on line and actually work bloody well,ive found not to let the container get too full or youll blow what ever your sucking out all over out that discharge nozzle,good job Terry.

[The Sovereign Man]

Do I spy a can of Supercheap Auto Export Degreaser? Great stuff, doesn't stuff up the aluminium...

On sale for Father’s Day

[RAFster122s]

Dave, saw this and thought you might like it.

[Terry in Australia]

Nice! Only problem here in locked down Melbourne is you need to order it on line or by phone, then drive to SCA, park out the front, ring them to say you're waiting, then they come out and put it in your car. It's good stuff, but I've got 50 litres of stale fuel here, so I'm pretty right for degreaser for the time being...........

[spotty]

shame, i could do with some of that stale fuel, its burning season up here in the hills, ive got a burn planned for tomorrow and i'm paying $1.40 a litre just to chuck it on gthe wood to get it  burning

of course i do mix it with old engine oil about 50/50, soak big thick books and rags in it to use as fire starters and then get to set fire to it so its not all bad

and before anyone accuses me of being a nazi book burner, i go to a local charity shop and buy the biggest books i can find in their 5 for a dollar section, and always go for crappy romance novels or self help manuals, its a double bonus sort of thing, i get to play with fire and i rid the world of books that should never have existed

[Terry in Australia]

Yeah that sucks balls Spotty, this fuel is "semi stale", it came out of my son's exploder when we replaced the fuel pump a few weeks ago. He'd tipped 20 litres of fresh fuel in, so it's probably just what you want for your Nazi book burning party! Oh well, there's always next year.

[jaytee-nz]

Terry - good job on getting the old girl back to life.
Any further signs or confirmation that this was your old bike ?

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks mate, and no, no way of ever really knowing. I did a rego check in NSW and it says it was first registered in NSW in 1986, which might mean that it couldn't be mine as I had it registered in Victoria in the mid 1990's (I can't remember exactly when I bought it or sold it) but it doesn't say whether it was registered under that plate number for the whole period or where it was registered before 1986? Bikes move between Victoria and New South Wales all the time, several of my bikes were previously registered in NSW, so it might have gone back and forth.

Anyway, even if it's not my old bike, it is amazing that it had the plain engine covers, the Koni shocks, the Dyna III ignition, the OEM exhaust and the Metzler tyres the buyer told me he'd had installed. None of those things were uncommon (apart from the Dyna III, I bought mine from Mike Beltrami in the US, and had never seen one in Oz at that stage) but it is certainly coincidental that they were all on the same bike. No matter, I'm having fun with it, and that's the main thing.

[PeWe]

The Dyna III might be your old one