Author Topic: 73 CB500 Project (Read 10768 times)

lynchj · « **on:** June 30, 2009, 09:55:40 AM »

OK, I'm hoping that this helps inspire me to "Git er done". The other day I was reading through some one elses project and it made me think that I've left my project hanging too long so... yesterday I dragged the frame out of my basement and pressure washed it, it looks so much better.

Starting way back last October, a friend donated his 73 CB500 to me. He was starting a restoration on a 75 Rockon 360MX and the CB had been sitting for at least 15 years (with the head off). This is after pulling it out of the shed

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh305/lynchj_pic/Honda%20CB500/DSCF0007.jpg[/img]]

On the trailer

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh305/lynchj_pic/Honda%20CB500/DSCF0014.jpg[/img]]

Home in my garage

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh305/lynchj_pic/Honda%20CB500/DSCF0019.jpg[/img]]

My toys
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh305/lynchj_pic/Honda%20CB500/DSCF0018.jpg[/img]]

The first thing I did was vacuum out the mouse stuff out of the cylinders and bring everything into my basement, it was so cold in the garage. The next installment will be a brief history of the motor rebuild

lynchj · « **Reply #1 on:** June 30, 2009, 12:41:23 PM »

Engine rebuild: This is going to be brief because I only bothered to take a couple pictures.
The biggest problem was that one of the pistons was really stuck in the cylinder.
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh305/lynchj_pic/Honda%20CB500/DSCF0021.jpg[/img]]

I filled the cylinder with PB Blaster and occasionally gave the piston a rap with a chunk of brass and a hammer. This took a long time to finally break it loose.
Suprisingly the cylider wall was in pretty good shape, after some vigerous honing the cylinders were looking good for diameter and taper.
I managed to clean the pistons up, the ring grooves were filled with junk and they were in tolerance too. I put in new rings, all seals and gaskets were replaced, lapped in valves, and did a little port matching.
I took this picture just so I could remember how the shift forks went in http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh305/lynchj_pic/Honda%20CB500/DSCF0006.jpg[/img]]

This is the final product
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh305/lynchj_pic/Honda%20CB500/DSCF0007B3.jpg[/img]]

lynchj · « **Reply #2 on:** July 08, 2009, 07:17:26 AM »

This is my "inspiration bike" I found it on Bikepics.com and my son did some photoshop magic to make it the colors I want. I'd love a Guillari seat but that is a ways off in my rebuild.

lynchj · « **Reply #3 on:** July 08, 2009, 07:31:31 AM »

Now that the motor is pretty much done, I started in at stripping the frame down. these are a few "before" pics. I think they are fairly typical of a bike this age but I don't really know since this is my 1st bike restoration.

lynchj · « **Reply #4 on:** July 08, 2009, 07:49:22 AM »

Once I got the frame stripped down I used an angle grinder and a wire wheel to remove a good portion of the paint. In the 1st picture I had just gotten started, I had to stop when my cat Emma came over to investigate what I was doing. The next step was to sandblast the frame. I have an inexpensive siphon feed blaster that is OK but not great, the media I ended up with was way too fine and it took a loooooooong time to finish. My poor compressor was working hard to and couldn't keep up so I had to stop every now and then.

lynchj · « **Reply #5 on:** July 13, 2009, 06:57:32 AM »

One more step completed, the frame is painted. I didn't take many pictures, camera wasn't working after priming but I fianally got it figured out. Since this is a low budget operation I'm painting the frame with rattle cans. I used the industrial Rust-Oleum primer and gloss black, 3 coats of each. It looks better in real life than the picture shows, I think it's the sunlight through the trees that make it look splotchy, I'm no photographer.
The next steps are the swing arm, new bushings and tapered roller steering bearings and get them put back on not sure how long that will take.

lynchj · « **Reply #6 on:** July 17, 2009, 07:55:44 AM »

My swing arm is now on it's way to Hondaman for new bushings and I'm waiting for the tapered roller bearings for the steering stem to come in. I took apart the triple clamps and the lower inner race came off pretty easily.
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh305/lynchj_pic/Honda%20CB500/DSCF0001.jpg[/img]]

I bead blasted the die cast bar / indicator light mount and sand blasted everything else. I think I'll just clear the aluminum parts and paint the steel parts black
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh305/lynchj_pic/Honda%20CB500/DSCF0004.jpg[/img]]

MCRider · « **Reply #7 on:** July 17, 2009, 11:28:24 AM »

Nice progress. You'll appreciate the SA bushings from HM. Its not just that they are bronze, we could do that ourselves. If I'm not mistaken its a better bronze than is available aftermarket and they are hand fit to your pieces.

The tapered steering bearings fix that problem forever.

Good to know the idiot light holder will glass bead. I've decided to use it on mine, and need to dig it out of storage to polish it up. Couldn't remember what it was made of. Think I'll leave all the labeiling off. The colors are self-explanatory.

Too bad you couldn't fit the flames into the theme. I love flames!

lynchj · « **Reply #8 on:** July 17, 2009, 12:30:11 PM »

Thanks for the comment.
I think the idiot light holder / bar clamp is a die cast aluminum, it's kind of soft but a glass bead blast (we have one at work

didn't damaged it at all.
I like flames too, maybe the final product will have them, that's a long ways off, I'm doing this one step at a time, in my "spare" time. The tank is a bit of a worry to me, it has a Kreem or something like that coating inside and it doesn't look good. I also have yet to pull the carbs apart so there may be suprises in there too! I know I'm going to have to re-lace the wheels, the spokes are really rusty, I've done dirtbike wheels before, it's a long slow process but you feel so good when it's done.

MCRider · « **Reply #9 on:** July 17, 2009, 12:36:47 PM »

Quote from: lynchj on July 17, 2009, 12:30:11 PM

Thanks for the comment.
I think the idiot light holder / bar clamp is a die cast aluminum, it's kind of soft but a glass bead blast (we have one at work didn't damaged it at all.
I like flames too, maybe the final product will have them, that's a long ways off, I'm doing this one step at a time, in my "spare" time. The tank is a bit of a worry to me, it has a Kreem or something like that coating inside and it doesn't look good. I also have yet to pull the carbs apart so there may be suprises in there too! I know I'm going to have to re-lace the wheels, the spokes are really rusty, I've done dirtbike wheels before, it's a long slow process but you feel so good when it's done.

There have been a couple of threads about what to do with a bad Kreem job. I never followed them through to resolution, but you're not alone. Probably search "kreem" and you'll find them.

Fresh spokes always perk things up.

lynchj · « **Reply #10 on:** July 21, 2009, 05:15:36 PM »

After cleaning up the steering stem / triple clamp I kind of discovered a technique to get a nice finish on aluminum parts. This may be already known and probably has been done before but it's new to me. After sandblasting with a 120 grit emery I tried brushing the aluminum with a soft brass bristle brush and I really like the finish. I'm just going to wax it instead of trying a clear coat. here is an image of my upper clamp with 1/2 of it brushed / burnished.

lynchj · « **Reply #11 on:** July 21, 2009, 05:28:22 PM »

Ya, I think I finally got image posting done right, took long enough.

I got my tapered roller bearings in from Z1 Enterprises and installation was pretty simple especially after reading about the issues other people had. I just followed the instructions and the ones I found on this site in other posts. This is the label and instructions supplied.

I found that I needed the thinner washer (3mm thick) on the lower bearing to get the bearing height even with that of the original bottom bearing and that the lower seal does not fit inside the the head so I just left it out. You can see that one of the stops on the lower clamp is broken.

This is it all assembled, I still need to clean the old paint off the top nut and washer but at least it's starting to look like a bike.. sort of.

HondaMan · « **Reply #12 on:** August 07, 2009, 08:32:53 AM »

Boy, I really like the looks of that triple tree: I'm going out to find me a brass brush. With a good clear coat, that could make a sweet-looking semi-customed front end look.

I can post a pix or two of the swingarm build, if you want it here.

lynchj · « **Reply #13 on:** August 07, 2009, 01:09:48 PM »

Quote from: HondaMan on August 07, 2009, 08:32:53 AM

Boy, I really like the looks of that triple tree: I'm going out to find me a brass brush. With a good clear coat, that could make a sweet-looking semi-customed front end look.

I can post a pix or two of the swingarm build, if you want it here.

Thanks , I'm doing the same brass brush trick on the lower forks and I found some clearcoat made specificly for bare metal at Eastwoods.com.
That would be cool for some pics of the swingarm rebuild, I think a lot of people would like that or perhaps another thread on that specific topic.

lynchj · « **Reply #14 on:** August 23, 2009, 12:27:19 PM »

It's been a while since I last updated this but I have been working. The front forks were my next piece of the puzzle to get rebuilt. As you can see from this picture it's been a long time since these babies have seen the open road, nasty.

Here's one of all the pieces

Lots of rust and the fluid was like sludge.

After sandblasting the lowers and the master cylinder too, almost forgot that I rebuilt that too.

lynchj · « **Reply #15 on:** August 23, 2009, 12:49:57 PM »

While I was waiting for parts for the master cylinder and forks I decided to start in on the front wheel, thats pretty nasty too.

"I think I need new spokes" said Captain Obvious

I didn't take any pictures of removing all the rust off the upper fork tubes because I don't want to have any memories of that ordeal so here it is as of today, with my Hondaman rebuilt swing arm on too. I had a picture of it but I must have missed uploading it.

lynchj · « **Reply #16 on:** December 25, 2009, 07:30:59 AM »

It's been a while since I last posted. I have had periods of not doing anything on the bike, not sure why but motivation has dwindled. Money, or lack of it, is part of it and other life stuff seems to take priority. Enough of that....
This is the caliper as dismantled, it's a mess, needed to use the grease gun method of extracting the piston. Piston is shot, I found another piston ($5) at the Rice-O-Rama this summer.

lynchj · « **Reply #17 on:** December 25, 2009, 07:42:59 AM »

Next step is the bars and switches. I really like Pro-Taper dirt bike bars (Henry / Reed bend) so that's what I used. They are about 3" lower that the stock bars and are swept forward a little more. I had to drill them and deburr the edges with a die grinder.
This picture is a little out of sequence but.....

The switches, Hi / Lo, horn, directionals and so on were in pretty sad shape (that's a suprise!) and the directions that were on the bike were from some other make. I found a cheaap directional, again at the Rice-O-Rama (another $5) from a cb750.

This is all of the pieces in the main power / headlight / starter switch

lynchj · « **Reply #18 on:** December 25, 2009, 07:51:15 AM »

I took more pictures of the switch restoration but my macro skills are pretty bad so I'm not going to post a bunch of blurry images.
This is where the bike progress stands today.
I have started on cleaning up the headlight bucket but not much progress.

lynchj · « **Reply #19 on:** April 02, 2010, 10:05:08 AM »

Once again I'm way behind on updating this build post. I rebuilt the tach (thanks to some awesome info found on this site) but I didn't take many pictures of the process. Soon I'll be working on the speedo and I will do a better job of documenting that Ha Ha ya right. One item I had a lot of trouble with was the rubber cushion / gasket, I found that a darage door bottom seal at the local True value worked excellent, it did need a bit of trimming. More on that in the next post.
These are some before and after pictures:

lynchj · « **Reply #20 on:** June 28, 2013, 12:51:49 PM »

It's been a really long time since I last posted but I have been working on the bike and have made some pretty good progress. There is still a lot to do.
This is my front wheel after lacing and drilling the rotor. I have pictures of those processes too but ...

lynchj · « **Reply #21 on:** June 28, 2013, 01:15:46 PM »

And here is the rear wheel before, durring and after....

More updates to come, like I said I'm way behind on posts.

Bankerdanny · « **Reply #22 on:** June 28, 2013, 02:50:51 PM »

Welcome. Nice to see a fellow B owner on the forum.

lynchj · « **Reply #23 on:** July 01, 2013, 12:58:12 PM »

Quote from: Bankerdanny on June 28, 2013, 02:50:51 PM

Welcome. Nice to see a fellow B owner on the forum.

I've had MGB's for most of my life, right now I have one running (resto mod restored) and one waiting for attention.
They are great fun to drive, when they are running right.

Bankerdanny · « **Reply #24 on:** July 01, 2013, 01:22:52 PM »

I've had really good luck with mine. I believe the mileage is over 150k, the speedo cable was broken for 20 years and the PO could only estimate actual mileage when I bought it in December 2011. It's my year round regular driver. I've put about 13,000 miles since I got it and I've only needed to be towed once, and I created that problem myself by not making sure the bolts were properly tightened on a brake caliper.

It looks like we have about the same year too.

Are you a member over at MGExperience?

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Author Topic: 73 CB500 Project (Read 10768 times)