Honda-SOHC

If they did a 500-4 I'd buy one like a shot.

Was a big model builder in my youth, spent 6 months just on the engine of a 109E, oil and rust stains coming down the engine etc. In all it took me almost 2 years to complete, I'd just finished spraying the lowerside of the wings in a light blue and left it on top of my wardrobe to dry, mum comes in hoovering, knocks the wardrobe and it fell off, smashed to bits. Threw it in the bin as I just didn't have the heart to do it all over again.

My favourites though were WW2 ships, I'd weight the hull with plasticine, make compartments out of carboard and drill a small hole in the front, they used to sink so realistically, sometimes taking up to 30 minutes to go down. I'd just sunk a model of the Hood when I was a young boy, my dad had made that, forgot about it and my brother who wanted a bath jumped in after I'd got out, sat down and the main mast of the model went right up his you know what, he jumped up with the model stuck to his arse, I got a bit of a leathering for that but boy was it worth it, still laugh now at the mental image.

I don't see a single claim by Busso that says they make them. They do however sell at lot of replica bits clearly sourced from other websites, the exhaust clamps are from DS, as I suspect are the hanger brackets and the exhaust gaskets show Honda part numbers.

I'm left wondering why IF they make the original exhausts they bothered to make reverse cone copies. My opinion is they made these before copies became available again some years ago and kept selling them as they already had the tooling in place. The other things which makes me suspect they don't make them is why not just make the silencer part as they do for the reverse cone ones, they list downpipes for the 500 but it clearly states when you click on them that they are for the 350-4

I don't think Busso make the original looking pipes, I think they just source them from the manufacturers who make them for CMS, I'd say they just do the reverse cone silencers themselves.

To allow the bracket to be moved slightly to get a better alignment. It’s not the forward and backward alignment that changes when you tighten the 10mm bolt it’s the in/out alignment that changes, it’s this that twists the exhaust out of shape. How many exhausts have you seen where the jointing rubber is sitting at an angle. If the exhausts are properly aligned they are right above each other and that rubber is straight.

Quite a few people complain about a clunking sound on the 500 suspension, seem to recall Philward was one. The 550 doesn’t seem to suffer from this problem but then the 550 doesn’t have that damper rod locked into the top nut.

It’s possible it could be the damper piston hitting the base of the damper chamber. In which case a heavier oil could stop it.

I've found directly the opposite, the repro brackets are less rigid and use a thinner metal then the original brackets. They will both fit both types BTW. I did find the repro brackets made the exhausts sit out of line on some of them. My BIL bought a set of repro brackets from DS and we ended up using my original brackets as templates to bend the back into shape. The lower brackets are the most out of line.

Considering the repro pipes are supposed to be made on the same presses that made the originals it makes you wonder how it can be misaligned. Oddly I have an original No1 & No2 exhaust that I found in the shed, I'd filled them with old oil 40 odd years ago and they are really good, you could have test fitted a genuine No2 pipe to see the difference.

I have a set bought from CMS in 2020? that are still boxed, I'm hoping mine look ok when fitted, I have checked them out and they are perfect but it's the fitting that proves whether they are or not.

Noted.