Topic: My 77 CB400f winter project

[amemoryoncelost]

 So I bought my first CB. My very first bike was an early 70's CB90 from Japan and as far as I know, never brought over here to the states, I'll grab some pics later on and show them, would love to get that bike road worthy again. Anyways, the love for the 70's style honda has never left me and I picked up a '77 CB 400f this weekend for $500 from Portland. She's in good shape, original paint, aftermarket exhaust(PO says kerker) and a couple of other random odds and ends. Motor needs some work for sure and I may go as far as a top end rebuild this winter, but she runs decent. For now, just so I can take a nice sunday ride to the store and back without any pushing, I'll be doing valve adjust, carb sync, new points and plugs and an oil change. Hopefully I can document most everything with pics, since a picture is worth much more than ten people trying to describe it to ya, well, sometimes at least.

 So this is the start to hopefully a pretty complete build by next spring. Here are a few pics I've taken with my phone. I'll add more as I work on the bike. If anyone has any ideas or advice, please feel free to post it here or PM me. My idea is to go a little cafe with this, but nothing overboard. I wanna be able to give any willing ladies rides and I want it to run good(no pods). But the bars and smaller lights will probably find their way to the bike eventually.

 Anyone have advice on the valve adjustment? Are the motion pro tools easy to work with or should I just use a classic set of gauges? What are the sizes I should be going with? .05mm(in) - .08mm(ex).

 Alright, way too much for one post. Hopefully this project moves right along this winter!!!

[tsflstb]

That looks way too nice for a $500 bike.

I found some regular feeler gauges with a 45 degree bend at NAPA or Autozone to check valve clearances.  I can't remember what the clearances are, something like .003 - .004".  You can download the Honda shop manual somewhere on the internet - it's probably linked on this site.

[Swede]

That is a great looking bike congratulations.  That sure does look like a Kerker on that bike, I have Kerker headers on mine and they look exactly the same.  The more I see the 400F's the more I want one.

[amemoryoncelost]

 True story. I was looking for a 550 actually and had a wanted ad on craigslist and this guy calls me up out of the blue. I'm just hoping it wasn't $500 because the motor is blown and I'm just biding time until I'm pushing the bike 20 miles from home. Everything will be a little clearer once I do the valves and some other work. Either way, if I end up having to do a complete rebuild this winter, it's still a good looking bike.

 I did download the manual, but it seems when I did some searches, people were saying the .05 and .08 while the manual suggests something different, but now that I think about it, i think I have a 350f manual, so I'll work on the 400f manual tomorrow and go from there. Thanks!

[R. Hykawy]

Nice bike,the tappet specs are the same for intake & exhaust .002in. I've adjusted mine with these specs with no problems. I picked mine up for $150.00(Cdn.)