Well after a couple of days of work you'd reckon the bike would be running and I'd be posting a vid of it running Bill, but, well, it's not quite there yet. Yesterday I rebuilt the carbs. Of course, nothing ever runs smoothly and I discovered that I have two slightly different sets of carbs. No biggie, except that the carb rebuild kits I bought were for the other set of carbs, the ones that haven't been vapor blasted, so I used what I could, and cleaned up some used parts from these carbs.
T500 Saturday 2 Oct 2021 1 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
I was able to use the new float valves, needles and main and pilot jets, so no real reason why they won't run fine. They look good.
T500 Saturday 2 Oct 2021 2 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
Yes, I know, "Pods?" well the OEM NOS $118 + $60 USD shipping (ripoff) filter hasn't appeared yet either, so the pods will have to do. I've seen pods on lots of T500's, so they must work OK. Stock main jets are 150's, I didn't have any bigger ones, so I raised the needles a notch and I'll see what it runs like once it's actually running. All I got done apart from the carbs was painting the battery box, which I needed to install today as the oil tank mounts to the frame, and there's a screw that goes thru the battery box into the oil tank, which is a good idea to install before adding all the electrical gubbins, as I found out with the T350, which is just a smaller version of the T500.
Why did I need to mount the oil tank?, well I probably didn't, but I needed to mount the oil pump cable before installing the carbs, and I figured it was a good idea. Of course, the gods were giving me a hard time this weekend, so the first thing I couldn't find was the screw in adjuster, so I modified this thing that was attached to the CB750A (incorrectly) when I first bought it, but as I never throw anything shiny away, I put it in the lathe and drilled a 3mm hole thru the centre, ran an 8 x 1.25mm threading die all the way down (It was only threaded for 20mm) and it works fin.
T500 Sunday 3 Oct 2021 1 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
As you'd expect, that wasn't the end of my problems. At the lever end, there should be a round nipple with a saw cut thru it for the cable. I didn't have one, nor did I have a picture of one, and I didn't want to pull the T350 apart to take a peek. I just found this pic on Ebay. ($30 USD with shipping)
T500 oil pump nipple by
Terry Prendergast, on Flic
I bodged this one, which actually works well, I may leave it.
T500 Sunday 3 Oct 2021 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
I did want to connect up the oil line to the oil tank. I'd cleaned the little connector thingy yesterday, and I discovered today that the oil line was bent at an odd angle and was under stress when I bolted it up, so being that it's almost 50 years old, I decided to warm it with my heat gun to relieve the stress (for both of us) before I tightened it in place. I also replaced the clear sight glass with a new OEM lens, as my poor old eyes aren't getting any better, so a new sight glass is cheap insurance against running out of oil. I was happy that after I filled the oil tank and farted around with the bike all day, there appears to be no leaks.
T500 Sunday 3 Oct 2021 3 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
As you can see the carbs went on no probs, and the new inlet rubbers (aftermarket, I think) seem to be fine, but I've kept the old rock hard OEM ones that will soften up fine temporarily if the aftermarket ones fail.
T500 Sunday 3 Oct 2021 5 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
Again the restoration gods conspired against me. The aftermarket "1 into 3" throttle/oil pump cable assembly is a POS. The plastic flange that the single cable goes into fell apart, and while it may still have worked, it pissed me off as all the cables are at maximum stretch. obviously the feller in China who copied this cable assembly didn't waste money on a new one, but just took his measurements off a worn out one. I threw it to one side and ratted thru my garage and found a crappy old used OEM one, that even though it's probably been in service for 20 years (well, maybe a bit less if it's the original one) it's not as "stretched" as the new one. Anyway the old one was working great, I was twisting the throttle open and enjoying hearing the carb slides snapping back when it suddenly stopped snapping back. Hmmnn, I better see what I've done wrong in the morrow.
I'd started the job of replacing the coils as both of the OEM ones look knackered, one is cracked and they both have seen better days. Like a CB750, the two coils are screwed to a rather nice alloy bracket, and as expected, mine was covered in 50 years of corrosion and crap, so I cleaned it up, screwed the new coils to it, and........ gave up for the day.
By this time it was after 5pm, I'd been working on the ol' beast for 7 hours straight with no food or, more importantly booze, my back was killing me, so I went inside, dropped some morphine and panadol, cracked open a Ginger Joe, and went back outside and sat staring at it. More tomorrow.

T500 Sunday 3 Oct 2021 8 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr