I recently had my 1978 CB550K immersed in water (thankfully, not salt) for about four hours after a flood. The engine seems to be running fine (I flushed it all out ASAP) but I'm wondering what other problems I might keep an eye out for. This bike always starts, and would have started off the battery (no idea why the battery was still working at all) the next day if I hadn't run the battery down before the points were cleaned. The guy from the shop picked her up, recharged the battery, cleaned the points, and she started. First start of the season, too.
The bike had 6,700 miles on her when I bought her in 1992, and original tires (!). Talk about dried rubber. She then spent most of the decade in storage while I was out of state. She's got about 11,000 on her now.
There's a couple of overdue maintenance issues I was warned might be a problem, specifically a leaking fork seal from last season. The guy from the shop told me being immersed might have aggravated the problem and I really ought to tend to it. Does anyone have a clear picture of the actual internal assembly? Should I ask in another section of the forum? All three of the mechanics I spoke to told me I really ought to do it myself (even though the manual says you need a special tool to replace the seals). The Clymer manual (first thing I bought after buying the bike) is not clear on how the assembly works. Having never taked the forks apart before, I'm not clear on how they work. I'm not crazy about the idea of taking them apart only to find I can't get them back together for whatever reason.
Wrenches don't scare me, but I'm a little hesitant to mess with the parts where the rubber meets the road on a bike. Unlike a car, there's not a lot of slack in that part of the system.
I can post a picture of the Clymer diagram and point out the parts I'm not clear on, if that would help clarify what I think I need to know.
