Topic: CB500 new clutch and brake levers - ebay universal kit

[zenocchio]

I have not posted here for a while,
I have been riding the bike all summer long, and now that the weather is crappy I took it apart again
I rebuilt the charging system, fixing the battery issue, then upgraded few things, like rear brake light and instruments, polished few stuff and changed the handlebar to clubman.

I swapped the brake lines with new stillness steel ones, specifically made for the new bars.
Now putting the brakes all together (i also cross drilled the rotor), the M/C is leaking right at the lever. I rebuilt it last year and was working fine. I left it empty for good 4/5 months, so it might have dried up?

I am looking at swapping the master cylinder with a new one, and possibly change the clutch lever too with an adjustable one.
My clutch is very hard to pull, so an adjustable one might work for my needs.

I am looking at the one on feebay, like the ones below.

does anybody have installed them?
will they fit on club mans?

[wjustinleigh]

I can't speak to those levers, but I have two cb500 builds (one complete, one in process) and I spent a lot of time on clutch lever issues.  People here will know more than me, but the cb500s (fixed on the 550s) have a weak clutch cable system.  The clutch cable itself needs to be a new cable from honda, not the knock off one.  The knock off one (I own one) has a plastic coating on the wire in the cable that slides with the wire.  I'm sure this was meant to reduce friction and protect the wire, but it increases friction making it hard to pull the cable.  I switched to drag bars which increased the excess cable wire (similar to your club man).  This resulted in more clutch cable looping around, creating more friction.  Most importantly, where the cable connects inside the case there is a clutch lifter bracket that gets bent very easily.  The harder it is to pull the cable the more pressure it puts on this piece, the more the piece bends the less direct the motion is resulting in more pressure needing to be applied.  Eventually that piece fails and you'll hunt the world looking for a new one.

The short of all that, is that lever may increase your leverage making it easier to pull the cable, but it won't solve the underlying problem and will likely result in breaking that clutch lifter which will be a bigger problem.  Get a good honda throttle cable that's the right length for clubmans and make sure it is run with as few turns as possible.  I found that with the right cable set-up it's nearly the same effort to pull the cb500 clutch as my 07 suzuki.

[zenocchio]

I can't speak to those levers, but I have two cb500 builds (one complete, one in process) and I spent a lot of time on clutch lever issues.  People here will know more than me, but the cb500s (fixed on the 550s) have a weak clutch cable system.  The clutch cable itself needs to be a new cable from honda, not the knock off one.  The knock off one (I own one) has a plastic coating on the wire in the cable that slides with the wire.  I'm sure this was meant to reduce friction and protect the wire, but it increases friction making it hard to pull the cable.

I have installed new cables too, and switched to the new coated one. I thought that my issue was due to the lower bars, not the cable itself. Good to know that, I will probably switch it back to the old one, and see if it makes a difference.

thanks for the heads up!