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James' 77 550f.
luceja:
So it turns out that a friend had a 550 about half dissembled, taking up space in the garage and he was glad to be rid of it. Most of the parts are here and most of it's in decent shape. History pretty unknown... Big concern is the motor- the whole top end is off.. why? Looks like someone scotch-brite surfaced the head and there's a bit of corrosion in a couple cylinders and things look murky down in the bottom of the motor. As for bits, the frame is pretty clean and should clean up fine. 4-1 headers are probably keepers, muffler isn't. Tank is clean inside, but I'm no fan of the color. Handlebars are silly, front tire is shot, gauges are tired looking, wheels are OK.
Goal is to get the thing running, look clean, and not cost a ton of money. First concern is the main mechanical stuff, then I'll worry about looks and other mod/details. Right off the bat I just picture lots of black and maybe a brown seat (?). I'd love to get two calipers going on those front forks.. unused holes will forever nag at me. No need to make plans now.. I'll just change 'em anyway.
Picked the bike up on Saturday and by Tuesday the only things still on the frame are the swingarm and the triples (need those big sockets). and I fit a trip to Seattle in there to boot. Labeled all the harness ends and bagged/labeled all the hardware..
Motor out!
Got that honeycomb crunch...
What is this thing?
luceja:
So big concern like I said is the motor. It came with the top half all apart.
The head looks like it was scotch brited:
and doesn't look very true:
I stopped by paulages to get his thoughts on it. At least one of the intake valves isn't sealing.. on his advice I tool the head to dan hall's (machine shop) to get the head looked at. Nice dudes there.. They're going to do the valves and surface it... the first expense for this bike. Thank you again, Paul.
The cam has a bit of corrosion.. I'll polish this up and measure to see if everything checks out..
The folks at the machine shop didn't like the look of the corrosion in at least one of the cylinders. Their take is that I'll have to rebore and get oversized pistons. Before they rebore, I need to find out what pistons are available so they can match, right?
clayman74:
i just had the same run in with the funky lil speaker lookin device behind the headlight. its the turn signal buzzer... weird huh?
luceja:
OK: got the head back from the machine shop. Surfaced, valves done, new valve seals to the tune of ~170$, dan hall's in portland. not sure what they cleaned with but damn is it nice looking..
... hmm should I have measured/plastigauged the cam bearings before having work done on the head?
Next problem is pistons and cylinders. The shop has the cylinders and is going to look at them and come back with piston recommendations/size options. Anyone have any tips on sourcing pistons, or other options?
I could swear DSS had a bunch of various oversize kits around just last week, but nothing now. Aside from a few one-off pistons on ebay, I really don't know where the hell I'm going to find 4 matching oversized 550 pistons. Anyone know if there are more common pistons that could work? Maybe I should just take a chance at ebaying some 550 cylinders and pistons from a part out? At that point maybe I should be looking at getting the top half of a 650.. mwahaha.
paulages:
they'll be able to tell you how far out you need to go with the pistons. as far as sourcing is concerned, i can't really help you more than where you're already at, but i can suggest that you PM Soos. If i remember right, he had some 61mm CB750 pistons that were cut to fit the 550/650. if not, he could probably cut a set for you cheaper than buying NOS oversized stockers if you can find a set to start with. i'll look at the shop and see if i have any.
re your head: they disassembled, jet-washed, measured everything, surfaced it, cut the valve seats, and reassembled. their prices just went up a bit.
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