Getting those carbs back in...

[ST1100]

Did some 'cheating' recently, or a prequel/rehearsal for my dawning 500/4 projects...

Aquiance of a friend brought his CB650 in, dripping carburettors...
Our first guess was offset floats (turned out correctly afterwards).
Prying the carb-bank out was rather easy, except the like 5 different types of jubilee clips on this bike... 

Float needles were fine, rubber tips still soft, no groove, float settings however looked like an ECG...  Up to 5mm off, amazing...
The little 'bending the tabs with tiny screwdriver procedure' solved this quickly.

One bowl seal fell off, slightly deformed, but the bloke had provided a box full of various spares, supposed to be new...
Yeah, right... fully hardened and squared, even worse then the one that came off...
Used my old trick, applying a thin layer of Pattex into the groove, seat the ring into the still wet glue and flip it onto the carb. Turned out to be tight and sealed...

Getting the carbs back in was of course not as easy...
The intake tubes to the standoff box gave us a real hard time, the inboard ones in particular, deformed, off shape, clips not fitting... 
I lost it and removed battery tray plus inner mudguard/air-box assy enabling me to reach through the inside, pushing them rubbers on from there.
So me kneeling aside the bike, right hand applying pressure, my friend on top of it, prying the clips on with two screwdrivers, and me tighten the clips with my left hand... a hilarious picture 
And of course the goo dripping out the ignitors came all over my right upper arm...grrrr... 

Happily all set and done we reinstall the inner mudguard, battery tray and tank, connecting the fuel line to see if their sealed... perfect, not a single drop out the overflows!

Confident of victory we route the overflow tubes between engine and swingarm cross member, getting the case vent back on, nice.

So my friend wants to start the thing and pulls on the choke button... bugger! The cable came off!!! 

Desperately avoiding to pull those carbs again, I aimed myself with a small flashlight, a long carburettor screwdriver and actually managed to rotate that choke pulley up! 
So I'm commanding my friend to gentle pull the choke... slowly, slowly...stop!
Grabbed some nose pliers, damn, too short... with a smirk my friend hands me a pair of surgery pliers... YESSSSS! Cable back in!!! 
Corrected the tension, testing on-off-on-off, working perfectly.

Cranked the engine, fired almost instantly, but is in desperate need of a valve adjustment... 

So my premier in actually working on SOHC has taken place 

[ST1100]

I always find loosening or removing all the engine bolts on the 500 is a easy way of getting the carbs back in.

On the 650 you've to remove one engine bold anyway, to get that battery tray out...
Its cramped in there, but I'd rather remove fender and inner mudguard before removing any engine mounts 
Especially on a bike that ain't mine... one bolt corroded shut snapping and you'll face quite some issues...
With new, filter sided rubbers and proper clamps it probably would have been a piece of cake, but on that 650 they were really worn so the carb sided connecting pieces were cone shaped like funnels... 

What was not sure about the little 'warts' on those rubbers, presumably some kind of alignment marks.
From the positions towards the carb nozzles, I assumed 'pointing inboard' as the proper positioning; would need to check the w/shop manual for the details.

However, I enjoyed working on this stile of 'motorsickles', different to modern cars and bikes, looking forward to the 500/4s...

[M0WBY]

Hi,

What were the symptoms? I have a 650 and it pops and bangs and won't rev up right under load. Especially at about 5k rpm. I think I need to take the carbs off and adjust the float hight and possibly renew some bits. All the plugs came out really black with soot on mine.

Cheers

John

M0WBY

[Bryanj]

There was a bulletin from Honda about early 650 needed mods to the airbax to run properly, can't find my copy at present but all of them were uploaded to the US site so should be on there