Honda-SOHC

There is one thing about the show that always makes me wonder. And that's how the hell do they do the shots of him on the bikes, the panorama shots, if it's a drone it's bloody close to him and you should be able to see a shadow of it in some of the shots, it's not on a stalk off his body or his helmet. I have no idea how they do that but it does impress me.

He doesn't mention his mate Pete the Restorer  from the earlier Motorcycle Shows (CB550K etc). who, sadly,  is also in prison.

It's a pity they didn't lock him up as well  The restoration of the 550K3 was criminal.

On the sohc bikes the seal can go into the slider before they are assembled, if a seal blows all you need to is to remove the bottom bolt, slide off the slider, replace the seal and reassembled. Only need to remove the top nut to put the oil back in.

Thread the topnut onto the rod as far as it can go, nip up the locknut and the pull up the stanchion after putting in 160cc of oil, fit the locknut into the stanchion and job’s done.

Not fitted the lifting arms onto the ball joints Ian? I always found it easier to do those before I mounted the carbs onto the bracket.

And I can't see the small peg that fits between 2 and 3 carbs for the return spring to mount onto?

The large alloy bit at the bottom is the damper chamber. The allen key bolt which goes in the bottom of the fork slider anchors this to the slider so it can't travel up. The top hat on the end of it is to spread the load at the bottom so it doesn't punch through the bottom of the slider. The large rod is the damper rod, on the 500 this screws into the top nut. The stanchions are shorter than the combined length of the spring and damper, hence why when you insert them into the slider they can move up and down and the spring protrudes from the end when it's inserted. The rod has a small piston attached at the bottom, this is what allows the damping to happen, the spring is there to return it. So as the damper rod moves down the piston travels down the damper chamber and small holes in the piston allow oil to pass through, the bigger the holes the less damping occurs and vice versa. The damper rod is trapped inside the damper chamber so it's this which anchors the whole thing together, it can come apart but I've never had to dissemble one.

The spring acts as the return, the more the spring is compressed the faster it returns the forks to full extension, so fitting washers on the top of the spring for instance helps the rebound, modern forks have what's called preload adjusters on them, which essentially are small spring compressors, the more they are wound in the harder the spring action is. On modern forks there is also a way to adjust the damping externally.

That help?

I presume we are talking about the rear brake pedal spring? if so a 550F one is quite hard to find so price it accordingly. If it's the one on the end of the rod that's the same.

The shape and the bolt holes look like it may be something off the front footrests. Possibly a home made spacer because the rubber was too big..