Hello fellow SOHC chums
This is just to introduce my project and give some backstory (if it is of any interest).
The backstory
I am almost 50 years old now. I have owned my 1976 CB400 Four since June 1988. When I bought the bike it was fairly standard except for a reverse cone megaphone exhaust, no mirrors, one missing side panel and the remaining panel and tank were finished in matt black. This was my first 'big' bike after the delights of a CG125. The PO's mother sold me the bike for £300 while her son was at university. He was from the year above me at school and I neved did find out if the sale had his blessing. The bike was reliable and fun and I repaid that reliability and fun by despatching the arse off it. I would rag the poor thing up to London from the south coast and back with barely any thought for any sort of maintenance apart from when bits fell off (like the gearshift on the M1 at Teddington). A while later I became aware that these bikes were being considered 'classic' and so I started trying to look after it a little more. I had quit despatching (and my deluded notion that I was Ron Haslam in a dayglo bib) while I still lived. This was the pre-internet age and finding parts or advice was pretty hard so not a lot of progress was made.
Fast forward to university and I had another go at making the bike better but there is only so much you can do with no money and good intentions: degreasing components in the bath, rebuilding carbs in your bedroom.
Now let's move to 2005 when I had a proper job and almost a proper salary. I also, crucially, had a garage. The bike was stripped and an attempt at a grown up restoration started. NOS front and rear mudguards/fenders were obtained. A NOS complete exhaust was also purchased. The frame was powder coated. The fork stanchions were rechromed. I rebuilt the wheels with new spokes and rims. Then came child one and a move of house. I had not done anything with the engine but I had a spare (and indeed a whole other 400 four basket case) so I threw that into the frame to get the bike going and to avoid losing parts in the move. It did run for a while and then fell into disuse in a neglected corner of the garage, its puny 37BHP being no match for the other bikes with which it now shared space. Now its time has come and so I aim to properly rebuild the engine that goes with the frame. The engine has 51,000 miles on it and looks pretty skanky. I stole the rear light for my CB750K3 (elsewhere on this site), the seat has some inexplicable resin-type deposit on the back and the tank and side panels were sprayed using aerosols in the back garden of my student digs in about 1993. So the bike is half there with some of the more difficult-to-source items already accounted for.
I will post some pictures of what the bike looks like shortly but this is the poor, decrepit engine. Bless it.
