Honda-SOHC

Hi Guys,

Just received my cb550 cylinders back from rebore, honing and decking. Any recommendations on ways of cleaning up post the rebore?

Cheers
Topcat

Hey guys,

Have been attempting to split cases for a while now as I want to inspect the internals as there was a fair amount of gunk in the sump and a lot of other worrying signs throughout the bike.

I'm having an issue and want to avoid rushing in and doing more damage to the cases. First I've managed to mostly break the seal between the two cases on the side of the oil filter but on the back side of the engine it seems to be completely solid. I've checked and re checked I've removed all the bolts and really want to avoid prying anywhere. I think it might be getting stuck on either the little dowel pin things (other places on the engine these have been really rusty) so soaking the thing with penetrating oil and using heat but nothing appears to be giving.

Any suggestions on what to do around this area to avoid damaging the mating surfaces? 

Edit: forgot to mention this is a CB550F2

Thanks
Topcat

Hey guys,

Got a little bit of time to get the engine out (finally) after much frustration with rusted engine bolts. Was really happy to have sorted that.

Now run into something a bit bigger of an issue.

When removing the cylinder head I noticed the bolt size wasn't right on one side under the side cover. It seems someone has drilled out the original bolt and replaced with a bigger size.

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Next I notice that not only have they just drilled this out and cut a new thread they've left all the metal shavings in so there are bits of metal around the hole coming away and tiny bits in the oil.

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Which appears to be wearing around the cam

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As the hole drilled through the cylinder head also goes down into the cylinders is it worth looking for a replacement head. Also I have one of the heads with the additional 4 bolts at the top. If I can source a new head would any head from a 550 fit?

Also is it worth replacing the cam in this? (pics in next post)

Thanks
Topcat

Hi All,

This is the first project I've been worked on and if I'm being honest, the first bike I've actually done any work on at all (thinking I've bitten off more than I can chew at times).

Its been a while since my introduction post, and a couple of questions on the forum as I've had some pretty busy few months with family things so I haven't been able to work on the bike much at all, but thought I'd give a run down of where I am and problems I've got at the moment and perhaps throw up some pics and a quick video of the bike idling (some advice on this would be welcome).

Here is the bike as I picked it up, nice looking decent condition from my noobie view point at least, managed to get the bike up and running if a little clunky and it wouldn't idle at all.

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The carbs were pretty gummed up so first task was to strip and clean these, they were pretty bad, it was extremely difficult to disassemble and remove the jets and floats. a couple of the floats broke off during this process as they were seized solid as were the jets.

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Once I got these all removed I popped them in for an ultrasonic clean which is one noisy machine.

https://youtu.be/rODUkeJwIKM (video of the ultra sonic cleaner).
 
They came out pretty clean and then I rebuilt them with new jets (cheers to nurse julie on advice on where to buy jets), floats o rings etc.

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One of the slides was a bit damaged and I had to bodge it by sanding a pretty big burr.

The original bike was missing a number of pieces of the airbox and the airbox in general was falling apart so I decided for the moment I'll be running Pods (while I work on it) but will be putting velocity stacks on it eventually. So based on information I've seen here and on other forums I've jetted with 40 pilot jets and 115 main jets.

I've also noticed the solenoid for the starter is broken so will need to replace that (just waiting for the new one to arrive). So at the moment I'm kick starting the bike. After reattaching the carbs I must confess I did make a bit of a stupid error by not attaching the throttle cables and wondered why it wasn't starting

However now I've got the bike starting with full choke and sort of idling. It seems a bit clunky, originally it was only firing on 3 cylinders but threw in some new sparks and its firing on all 4. However when I close the choke the engine revs go up quite significantly and won't come back down.

Other problems I seem, the number 1 and 2 pipes are quite discoloured, 3-4 aren't discoloured at all, however this is the case from when I picked it up.

Also the bike seems to be running pretty hot with smoke coming off the pipes after idling for a few mins (I'm assuming this could be some oil that has leaked in the past but not really sure).

https://youtu.be/eShcfpoUhUY

Any help or pointers of where I start to look for these issues would be great.

Other bits and pieces, I'm stripping the bike down as I intend to get the frame blasted and powder coated, but wanted to get the engine at least running smoothly before getting to far in to the cosmetics.

I do plan on re doing all the electrical components as quite a lot of it appears to be either falling apart of held on with chewing gum.


Cheers
Topcat

Hi All,

Jumping the gun here a little bit as I'm just getting started with my CB550F project, but needed to get a battery to start the bike up. I got a decent price on an antigravity battery 8 cell so thought I'd give that a go, I've seen a few bikes running these without an issue, however I've seen a few posts on this forum that advise against running lithium batteries and a few conversations about running new Regulator/rectifiers with these batteries. I was wondering if there is anyone out there that has a CB550 with an antigravity battery that could advise on voltage rec/reg and any success or issues they've had (more than theoretical issues).

Specific questions I have:

Anyone know of a decent MOSFET R/R around 13.5-14.5V
Anyone know what is actually going on inside a solid state R/R (is this essentially a MOSFET R/R as I understand those and diodes)
Any more advice

As a side note if you hadn't guessed I'll be doing a cafe racer build hence the choice in batteries. Also I've got the bike running off the battery but don't want to run this long term without replacing the old R/R.

Cheers
Topcat