Honda-SOHC

You know how it goes....window shopping for the bits you don't need yet while you save your pennies for the stuff you do...
Well I fancy a mild cafe racer look for my F2, with dropped bars and a single seat. None of these parts came with the hike in a shape I would ever use, so I had a casual look on eBay to see what was about.

The world is full of 'CNC machined' alloy clip one retailing for £20! Cheap junk I hear you say....and I probably agree. Then you see the SAME cheap junk being sold for £50 by middle retailers... And again at quite steep priced by 'specialust' suppliers of Cafe Racer parts.

Once upon a time, price was a measure of quality. Now it seems everyone is buying in junk at rock bottom prices and jacking up prices...  So how the hell do you find quality online now?

In my part of the world the local bike shop us a distant memory. I can go 10 miles and find a place that will 'book me  in' for a service and charge £200 to adjust the chain and top up the oil but when I needed a clutch cable for a 10 year old bike, it was a special order job and would take a week.

How???

The manual says 'undo the 4 countersunk screws. The bearing journal will come away with the housing'

Simple.....no

How in the name of sanity do you get thoise screws out. They appear to have been put in by Hercules himself, and glued downwith the strongest threadlock known to man. Is there a knack to this? Should I use heat ( I only have a small blowtorch and a hot air gun... ) and is there anything I could damage doing that?  So far I have managed to shift none of them...not even a fraction. Screwdriver was not going to budge them, and hte impact driver won't shift them a mm either. Made me think they were left handed threads ...but the manual would have mentioned that....

It's the last barrier to splitting the cases for me and the only real issue getting it all apart ( well...that and the final drive sprocket being rust-welded on the splines...but once I get the thing out, I should be able to soak it some more and get a puller on it )

Well...the beast has landed. And what a beast

It's a US import, first registered in 1978, but apparantly manufactured in 1977. She came from South Dakota which has hot dry summers and brutal winters, so I reckon this has hibernated for half the year and seen light use for the rest as it's remarkably rust free. I have the US title showing it being sold on to an importer in 2014, and then hung around for a few years before actually getting here. Not sure if that is normal, or if they are stockpiling to drip feed in to keep prices higher. Whatever....she's my bike now!

The seller had put a maroon tank on it to sell it, but that was badly scarred. I asked about the tank ( it had no tap or cap... and I was offered another one if I wanted it ) and both were brought with the bike so I could choose. The other one was black...and apparantly was original to the bike. The same key fits the seat...ignition and petrol cap cover....which is a good sign. Only downer for this tank is the badges have been removed and the gap filled. I hoper they only used filler....not the grinder.... as I want to try and refit the badges. The trusty magnet test revealed no traces of filler anywhere other than the badge recess, and only one small dent in the tank. Wow. Last bike I rebuilt had more filler than tank! Frame rust is minimal and surface only....nothing deep or pitted. No scars or marks on the downtubes. Haven't put the laser on it...but it looks really straight. I genuinely think it's worth what I paid.....which is a good start. Of course...there are probably loads of horrors lurking in there, and I will find out hundreds of things I should have known before buying...but hey. Sometimes...you just have to go for it.

Here's the pretties...



Horrid seat....horrid bars....really not my taste.



But refreshingly...things like the rear inner mudguard have not been sliced up, the underseat toolbox is still there, and nothing looks too shabby.



Even the engine paint looks passable. Some minor flaking, but really solid in the main and no signs of horrid road rash. One of the points cover bolts is missing.....odds on it is eaither snapped or stripped...but I have had much worse. On runners.

The tank filler neck needs a new seal and a damn good clean....but inside...it's all like this....


Some rust scabbing along the sidestand side edge....but more clean metal than rust. Should clean up a treat, and the seams look in excellent order. I saw how this looked...and chose this one immediately over the maroon one. It even has the sweet little chain to stop you losing the cap. The other one didn't.

The forks look straight and clean...and even the chrome looks OK. A few little pits....but wow. I had a 5 year old Yamaha show worse pitting than this. The chrome on the front mudguard is intact, and looks like it will even shine up nicely. Brakes...don't work...but everything is there. The sludge in the master cylinder probably...er...needs changing...



Stand on the kickstart, and she turns over freely with enough chuff chuff noises and resistance to say it has compression. No nasty clunks, scrapes or scary sounds. Just the noise of air being pumped. Not going to do more until I get a look inside.

Paperwork shows a little over 14,000 miles. Of course....I expect that to be a lie....or short a zero... but looking at this thing, I can actually believe it. I reckon this thing will clean up a treat.

I have a vision in my mind too. Mild cafe racer overhaul, with no cutting/mangling of stock parts. Dropped bars and single seat replacing ones I have to replace anyway. I want shorty 4 intro 4 pipes stopping just short of the wheel spindle, but thast may or may not happen. I am thinking gloss black with a dull silver frame, keeping the black fork lowers and chrome mudguard. Black and silver to offset the black/alloy engine with a few chrome highlights. Black fork gaiters. Fitted chrome ring headl;ight is spotless...so that will stay but on new brackets.

I have a dream.....

Getting on a bit, tired,overweight, and not as quick as we used to be. Me. Not the bike!

So ifelt it was time to move on from the modern world, which frankly was doing little for me. Too much styling and not enough style with a lot of the modern stuff so I wanted a classic project. What better than a SOHC Honda!

Grew up with the classic 80s inline 4, but had mostly Kawasakis and Suzuki's but the ones I had then are, well,stupidly expensive now. I can't spend 3k on a rotted out Z or the 7K another big Katana seems to fetch. Nope...my initial budget was around £1000.

So I have landed one of the many Hondas heading our way from the US. A 1977 F2 model from a a e in Brighton. Looks ok, has compression, but not enough sparks to go round. Could be wiring..could be coil..

It's not my first restore, and I have always done all my own spannering.  But I am a novice when it comes to these.

My plan of attack is to get it running, and then strip and start from a freshly painted frame. Normally I would swap out the old oil, pop the cam cover and oil the cams. Use a dummy tank, and fire it up after turning it over a few times on the crank nut to listen for nasties and feel for instructions. Then try to get it to fire.

Does this work OK for these and are there other things to check?

Have read about the oil jets...where are they located?