Honda-SOHC

I find it relaxing Roo, honestly. There are days though where nothing seems to go right, my lads grab rail for instance, it's also a sort of back rest and the very top of the loop had this bloody great dent in it, decided to get rid of it, the metal is around 3/4" thick and I knew it wasn't hollow so loads of metal to work on, spend hours and hours sanding it down, the dent was so big it has split the metal, so as it got deeper in the dent started to go but the split just wouldn't. In the end I lost my rag at it and got the bench grinder out, ground it right down, lost about 1/8" of metal but split was almost gone. I thought I'll sand the rest but as soon as I touched it another gap opened up under it, at that point I just decided to call it a day and come back to it at some other time. Oddly I haven't done any sanding since, been about a week now and I've done nothing much on the parts I have ready. Even your exhaust collets are just sat in a bag in front of me, I get like that. Sometimes I'll just walk away and not doing anything for ages and then I get the urge and it's on again. When that happens I can spend 14-15 hours doing parts, especially in the summer, I've worked through the night many times.

It may be good enough for you Ken but not for everyone.

When I said it looks right I meant does it still look original, would anyone not an anal expert comment on something not fitted as standard?

If you've just spent the last year or so restoring a bike to OE spec and someone came along and started to rip it to bits how would that make you feel. Comments like, Those tyres are wrong, should be Bridgestones, the master cylinder wasn't quite that shape, is that a copy, you've repainted the handlebar switchgear and the colour of the letters is the wrong shade of red etc. You'd quite rightly tell them that all that doesn't matter so long as it looks the part, tyres were changed because new tyres work where the Bridgestones were just ditch finders.

I prefer to build mine so they look original but I don't like to repeat the mistakes Honda made in the first place, rear dampers that worked like Pogo sticks, it was common in those days for the speedo or tacho needle to bounce around like mad, would we settle for that now? Do we have to accept a wiring loom where all the power runs through one fuse, if that blows you stop. I had a mate back in the late 70s who was killed by just this thing happening, fast lane of the motorway, doing 70 or so, not speeding, just tootling along like you do, fuse blew for some reason, we never found out why, he suddenly slows as the bike loses power, car behind doesn't expect it and hits him up the rear end at around 100mph, catapulting him off the bike, his helmet flew off and he landed on his face, ripped most of his face off, he was just 17. His dad had to identify him in the morgue and it broke him, first of our gang to die and to this day I still get upset remembering him and the waste of that life for such a simple reason. Car driver got off BTW even though he was speeding it was deemed an accident.

I think it's arrogant of anyone to try and inflict their ways of restoring on anyone, so it might be the wrong black, who cares, it's black. Would you really notice if it was next to you at the lights? BTW Ted, we'd notice a nut brown frame, just saying  However if Ted had done the frame nut brown I might not have agreed with the choice but I'd certainly have admired the will to say "sod it, it's my bike I'll do it so I like it, if you don't, well hard luck"

Why no pics of the inside? what are they hiding?

I might have one of those flap locks lying around, didn't know they are rare. And yes, any Honda key fits as a rule.

Yeah but it's black, does that really matter. We do our yokes in satin and I'm fairly sure they came in gloss for instance or vice versa. We have repaints where we have the stripes painted on and not transfers, we use stainless spokes instead of crap normal steel ones that rust for fun, loads of examples like that.

IMO, we place far too much emphasis on it being exactly like it was when it came out of the factory and frankly that's virtually impossible, unless you've got one stored in a packing crate somewhere there will always be something that's not original fitment. If it works, look right and goes and stops right that's good enough for me.

Are you seriously saying that a powder coated frame wouldn't be acceptable on a restoration because it's not the way it was from Honda? That would open a HUGE can of worms if that's the case.

I'd agree with that Ted. If the bike already had a lot of K0 parts fitted then I'd say it may be worthwhile to convert it back but that doesn't appear to be the case. The differences whilst not extreme were subtle but easy to spot if you knew what to look for, most people don't and TBH it doesn't matter anyway.

Officially Honda never imported the K0, I asked back in the late 70s when on a course at Honda and spoke to a few of the guys there, they said that Honda only ever officially imported 3 500K0s. One black, one brown and one gold, these were all for press testing. One was written off whilst on test, one was scrapped (no one knew why) and one was sold to a member of staff, they seemed to think it was the brown one. So unless yours is that one (and with that frame number it's almost impossible, the first ones imported would have had very low frame numbers I'd imagine) it's not meant to be here and was clearly meant for the European market. However interest in the 500 back then was high so some dealers imported some from contacts on the continent and hence were called grey imports. There won't have been that many imported like that as expense for one would not have made it commercially viable especially as the K1 was already on it's way. A genuine UK first registered 500K0 is a bit of a rarity so I'd be proud of that, not many about especially after all these years.

It's also extremely robust Matt. It had to pass a test for the Army where it has salt water sprayed onto it for thousands of hours to see if it affects it. Passed easily, so must be more than good enough for our usage.

They reckon when it starts to dull just rub with some wire wool and solvol and it brightens it back up. Never had to do that but that's what they say.