Honda CB400NA Superdream - new money puddle.

[McCabe-Thiele (Ted)]

1700 Bryan?
Great looking frame Ted. Did the price include all the brackets etc?

I only sent the bare frame plus the steel half-pipe front engine bracket. Small stuff I will paint myself as per my previous builds.
I decided against having the rear swing arm powder coated for a numer of reasons. A member of the Real SD forum has repaired my center stand that had a partially rotted leg and painted it in 2K gloss black f.o.c.

I've left the Fork Ears with Ollie to powder coat them in a dull chrome effect, new ones are daft money, re-chroming even dafter.

[McCabe-Thiele (Ted)]

2 sets of 3000 plus one set of 2000.
The boss told me i was not allowed to spiders web from branch to branch so the run strats in middle up a branch going round spurs then back to middle to get to next branch.

Total load less than 5amp for the lot Ted, cant feel any heat from the lot at all.
The boss told "there are gaps!"

Is that 5 amps of your UK 240 A/C volts into the transformers, 1200 watts in total, you can turn the radiator stat down!

Trust they are the better type of wiring loom that starts off with loads of wires then the last run has just the two wires, so when an LED fails it just knocks out one small branch of lights? I've never figured out how that works, I guess  its a combination of series and parellel wiring loops.

[Johnny4428]

Hell! How long did that take to put them up? Think you’ll need your shades on in your living room!😎

[K2-K6]

I've not been trusted with the Christmas tree since the great tree debacle of 2015

My choice,, of a natural tree (local common scheme that allows you to cut your own for money to their coffers) resulted in a "ahem" sparse distribution of branch and greenery "ratio"  tried to manoeuvre my way out of it by naming it Twiggy, a veritable supermodel of tree form 

That cut no ice with Mrs K or the K minors, at that time.

For ever remembered, fondly by me, but no other.
They still bring it up 

[Johnny4428]

I've not been trusted with the Christmas tree since the great tree debacle of 2015

My choice,, of a natural tree (local common scheme that allows you to cut your own for money to their coffers) resulted in a "ahem" sparse distribution of branch and greenery "ratio"  tried to manoeuvre my way out of it by naming it Twiggy, a veritable supermodel of tree form 

That cut no ice with Mrs K or the K minors, at that time.

For ever remembered, fondly by me, but no other.
They still bring it up 

🤣🤣🤣
Our first encounter with the real tree purchase for our sitting room - I thought since our ceiling was 8’ we would order an 8’ tree, but I didn’t know was an 8’ tree was actually 10’ +! 🤣🤣 Thankfully out of our system now after many years (with a smaller version) we now have an artificial one.

[Mike_Berkshire]

We have an ‘artificial’ tree. My wife and I went on a craft course to build a tree out of recycled scaffolding boards. Once it’s decorated if you stand some distance from it and squint so your vision blurs it looks just like a real one. Well, ok, it doesn’t really but we love it.

[Bryanj]

The 8ft in the pic was bought after christmas in a big garden centre for less than half marked price and yes it took a while to put the lights on , about 3 to 4 hours over 2 days, my geriatric old back gave in on first day

[McCabe-Thiele (Ted)]

Nothing much doing on the SD due to my current bout of not-man-flu. Just a bit of background that is probably of no interest to anyone but as I'm struggling to sleep here goes.

I wrote to the long term PO soon after buying the SD to get a handle on where the bike has been since he parted with it. I included my e-mail address etc, no response so that was a dead end.

Yesterday being bored and effectively house bound I decided to clear out some of my old e-mail. I opened my junk mail folder to find several hundred messages that had been classed as junk by MS Outlook. As I scrolled down I spotted the name of the Superdream long term PO as the sender, however Outlook had auto deleted the body of the file so I could not open the file. After a lot of going round in circles I managed to restore the file.

This PO bought the bike in May 2011 finally selling it to a trader LMT Motorcycles in Little Addington in May 2024. It appears that it was then sold on to a new owner in the Leicester area between May-Sept 2024, then sold on the the PO who I bought it from who lives in a Leicester suberb.

LMT have a sales website with some interesting bikes & cars listed that might be of interest to sohc members, I see it as potentially useful state of the market price indicator. They seem to have an eclectic range of ICE vehicles. No idea how realistic the asking prices are but some do look reasonable.
https://showroom.ebaymotorspro.co.uk/LMT-Motorcycles-LTD?page=1

[McCabe-Thiele (Ted)]

Turns out the long term owner of my CB400NA did a deal and bought an early black CB250NA.

He has some new 400 parts that might be available, I'm waiting to see what he has.

I've actually done some faffing about in the garage this afternoon as I feel I'm recovering at last from the coughing bug.

Update, Over the weekend I received my three SS wheel spacers from Max - top bloke who will get a mention on the Superdream sites.

[McCabe-Thiele (Ted)]

Nice new wheel spacers from Max - top bloke.

.PXL_20241217_184658796 by Macabe Thiele, on Flickr

[McCabe-Thiele (Ted)]

Starting to recover from the coughing bug.

When my brother helped me remove the engine I put it on this newly acquired 6 wheeled trolley.
I was able to pull it up the ramp onto the bike stand with ease, no help needed.

I plan to fully clean the engine and paint it without full dismantling, hence the catch tray.
Obviously the underneath will be the more difficult part.

.PXL_20241218_094500265 by Macabe Thiele, on Flickr

[Bryanj]

Drain it and turn it upside down mate

[Johnny4428]

Fine to see it progressing Ted and glad to hear your on the mend! These spacers look ace! Might have to consider a set for my next project, which will be swerving away from what Honda intended!😜

[McCabe-Thiele (Ted)]

Feeling much better today so I spent  40 minutes in the garage before the cold started to get to my knees.
I removed the starter motor from the casing, put a bung in the casing to keep dirt out for when I resume cleaning the assembled engine.

The starter motor on the Superdream is at the front of the engine so it gets all the weather & road grime on it, also my model did away with a kick start leaving a bump start as the only alternative if the starter fails. As I have a couple of spare working starter motors that came with the bike I'm not going to dismantle the starter (never taken a bike one apart yet) just a clean of the alloy ends  & paint the steel casing part methinks.

This is the motor after the first petrol wash & quick clean with a soft brush in theb Dremel Tool.

.PXL_20241228_140026310 by Macabe Thiele, on Flickr

[Orcade-Ian]

Greetings Ted,
Glad you are improving - this stuff that seems to be going around takes longer to shift as we get older!
Anyway, I would personally strip the starter - especially without a kick start as back-up.  There's never been much wrong with the ones I've stripped but often found quite a bit of brush dust (always worth removing) and an occasional brush sticking in the holder, which is often the reason for them not working.  Is it the same as 400/4?

Ian