It's been a while since we updated, but here's the bike as it was last night. We decided go install my black '82 engine with the CV carbs that came with the '80. The rubber carb insulators on the '82 SC engine were considerably smaller, but port spacing and diameters are identical so a new set of insulators (the ones we have are rock hard) should match things as OEM.
My hope for the bike is to combine the best features of the CB550s and -650s, together with more modern improvements such as steel braid brake line, modern tires, better lights, lighter weight, and better suspension. And Paul is well on the way to making it reality.
Paul and I are both artists in our other lives, so this is almost as much an aesthetic collaboration as an engineering one.
I have a new friend named Paul Ages
Who used to play drums at the rages,
But I gave him my racer
And he said, "If you stay sir,"
I'll assemble your calf bike in stages.
Someone pray that I land on my head again and knock my brain the other way, please.
The Raask rearsets' inner mounting bosses were too long, spacing them too far out and making the linkages sit at an angle and the mounting bolts "too short," but milling about 5 mm from them corrected that. Now the indexing pin for the left peg interferes with the Raask seating fully, but that's easily fixed either by cutting the pin off or drilling the Raask. My Raasks were very crudely finished; I smoothed them some and Paul bead blasted them, and they're fine now.
There was an esoteric technical glitch, never to be divulged, on the left peg---but that's fixed.
We're using the CB650 gauges with the 550 idiot lights for now; at some point I will probably either install an LED idiot light array in the headlight shell, or inside one of the gauges. That's for later.
Things are starting to happen a little faster now. Stand by and see what happens!
Anybody know who's got OEM CB650 carb insulators?
Joe
