Here 'tis, in its ready-to-run-again glory!
This has easily been the most-parts-replaced engine I've ever done. Between the dust-rust and the water-damaged tranny parts, I even had to create a new spreadsheet to track all the bearings (every one had to be replaced, ball, roller, and plain) and miscellaneous missing parts. I tried my hand at restoring the poor beaten-up-and-rewelded alternator cover to try to preserve the pre-"Made in Japan" logo cover, but it's not show-worthy. At the cost of new alternator covers being over $300 USD apiece now, and the co$t of all the bearings, it was just getting too expensive overall.
I have to admit that I'd forgotten all about the retainer-ringed final-drive bearings in these early ones. That was the real chase for trying to put it back together because of the unique 62mm retainer ring in the final-drive output bearing. There's only 1 left, according to CMSNL, but there's probably some other Japanese bike that still uses them, just not with Honda part numbers. (?) For a time I thought of getting a full-round 62mm ring and cutting it by half, but finally CMSNL came through.
This was the first time I ever had to make a custom chain-oiler metering bolt, too. Those poor Honda techs who had to make those from a regular bolt, one for each engine (7,818 of them!) with the 1.25" long tiny rod that skewered the oil sponge: holy cow what a tedious job that must have been! That's been removed in favor of less oiling of the rider's left shoulder and the whole left side of the bike, which these were [in]famous for as Honda struggled to make the drive chains survive the HP of these monster engines. This one's skewer-tip was already gone and someone had already filed off the broken end of it, then removed the oiling pan to try to stop the mess. The new bolt will also plug the hole in the final-drive shaft by making it with 2.0mm longer threads that cover that hole. Even my Honda mentor Jim had plugged the oiler hole in his sandcast with an early form of JB Weld and oiled his chain with his own lube he made, dubbed "Chambo's Sneaky Sh*t Chain Lube" - he also sold it at the shop! He would pull the chain off once a month, melt some of this goo in a cookie sheet pan 1" deep, lay the chain in it and let it cool overnight before reinstalling. When it cooled you could hold out 3 links of the chain straight and stiff, which helped him put it back on the bike without removing the sprocket cover: he'd lay the 2 links onto the sprocket, then put it in 2nd gear and electric-start it with the kill switch OFF to feed the chain 'round. He got about 8k miles per OEM chain, which was a record with the 16T/45T sprockets in our shop. The Diamond XD and RK Chain's clone of it changed all that, though.
Unless you look really close (and know where to look), you can't tell that all those fins were missing: Ivo did a terrific job of recreating them!
It's got stock-sized 61mm bores with new sleeves inside, all new crank and rod bearings that will need to be broken in like a new engine (average 0.0010" clearance), and lots of internal parts that need to be oiled up with some miles to smooth it out. I suspect it will take 50-100 miles just to 'wet' everything fully, and then its oil will have to be changed out in case I missed any grit: there was a LOT of it inside, that nasty red Houston dust.
I'm wondering what the garage will feel like when it's gone: it's been here so long and received so much attention I think I should have named it?
