Spotted the part number when running down a list of parts available from a major dealer in the USA. The cost, I thought, was reasonable for a set of NOS barrels, $350 plus postage. After postage I paid just short of £400. However before buying what could be a rusty set of barrels with broken fins and peeling paint I asked the dealer to send me some pics and some sort of description of how they looked after almost 50 years in storage. The pics showed them still stored in an original Honda box, wrapped in a Honda marked plastic bag and also wrapped in heavy duty Honda marked brown paper, might have been oiled paper at some time but it's dry now.
There wasn't any clear pics of the liners but the dealer said they were in excellent condition, so I decided to take a chance and buy them.
They arrived about 10 days later. They are not in excellent condition, they are in superb condition. No broken fins, the liners are bright and shiny and no rust present at all, you can still see the honing marks from the factory. All in all a great result.
I have 6 sets of NOS standard Honda rings, 13011-374-000 so I thought I'd check and see what the piston ring end gap was. After checking every set of rings, using the top ring, in each bore, I can report that there is a difference in end gap, which is odd as you'd expect them all to be the same. On average 3 sets had a 0.009 thou end gap and 3 sets had a 0.011 thou end gap. Not exactly as tight as I expected them to be TBH, standard end gap is between 0.005-0.013 thou with the service limit of 0.027 thou.
The good news is that I still have all the rebore sizes available if I or the next owner ever need them. The paint is really good, couple of really small marks and the casting around the camchain tensioner bolt is pretty rough around it, the edges of the fins is also quite rough. So I think I'll commit sacrilege and do some work on these barrels. I already have a set of barrels I've worked on, the edges of the fins were flattened and polished, like the Harley barrels, they were then ceramic coated in satin black, this coated the edges of the fins so they were re-sanded and repolished back to previous state. I intend to go the same way with these barrels, that will upset some I suppose but I like what I like and the standard silver engine finish whilst attractive doesn't float my boat, I prefer to have the crankcases silver and the barrels and head in satin black with the camcover silver. The casings will be mirror polished I think.
The barrels will be rebuilt with standard genuine pistons and standard genuine piston rings with clips and pins original Honda as well. Hopefully that should give me a really good compression reading after running in.
Some pics. Packaging.
Original wrapping
Head gasket surface
Front view
No.4 cylinder end view
Rear view.
No.1 cylinder end view
Bore view, bores are actually quite dry, no oil feel at all.
