Honda-SOHC

Nice, and saves some Watts here and there.

The only issue's with led's is their colour temperature. The colour temperature of the original bulbs is around  2200 to 2700 Kelvin, the modern white led's have generally a colour temperature around 4000 to 5000, and sometimes 6000 Kelvin. In plain English, way to white / blueish. For me, one of the charms of these bikes is the old fashion "warm" white colour of the face plates. The warm white gives me that retro-look when riding it. Next to that, most modern LED's are way too bright.

I was also looking for replacement for my clock lights (for my 1966 CB450) and tried a few before I was satisfied with the result. If one can find LED's with a colour temperature of 2200 to 2700 K for the faceplates you're done, but in most cases, the colour temperature is not mentioned on web-sites or shops (except for head lights and indoor LED replacements).

I found that yellow LED's give almost the same warm light as the old bulbs did. For the neutral I choose amber (if you're  buying green, it's just too green), and orange for the winker indication, or in case of my bomber, for the hi-light.

Jensen

It's an easy job, the plugs aren't hardened. The new plugs can be made from aluminium and pressed in. Never tried steam, but I don't know if I wanted water in my big end bearings  as you mentioned. Next to solvents, patience is mandatory, but mechanical removing is always to prefer....

Sludge trap is also at the 5-speed crank, there's not much difference. I would only let them bore out the plugs and let them clean the oil ways, the rest only when necccary, but also depends what your plans for the bike are. The 5 speed cranks are difficult to press together straight, so if not necessary don't go for it.

Hi,

Just a member for a few days now, stumbling on this thread....

After high school, I assigned to the "Leidsche Instrumentmakers School", a school for precision technology (don't know the English word for it), afterwords I studies Physics and specialised in Photonics and Machine Vision.

When finished school, I found out that the society didn't need highly educated technicians (this was around the 90's, can you believe it ?), so I was jobless. After a while, I met the director of my high school, and he said me that I didn't have to be ashamed not having a job, because the Royal family never worked for their sustenance, according to him . He also explained that the job market is some sort of sea, with a wave of jobs every 5-6 years or so.

Anyway, I bought a bike (XT500) from the money I earned, working in an Irish Pub during my study, and went to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) to drink a cup of tea. After flying back to the Netherlands everything was changed on the job market, a new wave came in. I applied at a small company, and was taken, my fist job was a fact (I'm still grateful for the words of wisdom from my director). I worked for 17 years as a machine vision application engineer at this company, until the company decided to focus on producing instead of research, so I quit the job. In that time I worked at different projects around the world as a machine vision architect, in the UK as well, mainly for the beer and beverage industry, tobacco industry and food industry.

I took a year for doing nothing else than working on bikes, but that wasn't satisfying enough, so I applied for a job at a big Japanese company,and got a job as a Product Engineer Machine Vision, and that's still the job I have. I like my job, but couldn't do it without wrenching on bikes and riding them. I need to work with my hands, as a counterweight for my job. Last month I had my 50th birthday, so I'm an old geezer, as they say.

My plans are to step down a bit, trying to work no more then 50-60 hours a week, but that's hard, because there are too many projects, and not enough experienced people in this specialism at the moment. Because high end Machine vision becomes more and more available due to pricing, more and more company's are integrating a machine vision system in their machines. Especially in combination with robotics, the markets are booming.

But luckily I can take the classic bikes regularly to my costumers, so riding the bikes is covered.....

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Hi Nigel,

One gear only (4th), just rolling the throttle open. The mixture issue you see is due to opening the throttle a little too quick, which explains the lean mixture. If you look at the trace of the CB450 this effect is much smaller, because the CB450 has vacuum carbs.

This is just an impression of a run, unfortunately, I don't have a video of the CB400F, the link will lead you to a flickr video, I don't know how to implement this smoother.....

https://ci-27594733506.http.atlas.cdn.yimg.com/flickr5/40215250@N04/27594733506/27594733506_360p.mp4?dt=flickr&x=1512417878&m=video%2Fmp4&fn=27594733506_360p&bt=0&a=flickr&d=cp_d%3Dwww.flickr.com%26cp_t%3Ds%26cp%3D792600246%26mid%3D27594733506%26ufn%3D27594733506_360p&s=aa6a5c0262c66484d1c8c2dbb75f9bdd

Just before the riding season starts, I run the CB450 on a dyno, because the original 14C carbs are difficult to adjust. The dual cable setup is due the issue's with these carbs, and the tolerances between the vacuum piston and it's cylinder.

Hi,

Nice build !

One word of advice regarding the crank of these bikes.

Please do yourself a favour and bring the crank to a specialist and ask him / her to remove the left and right oil way plugs, clean the oil ways behind the plugs, and put new ones in.
This is well worth the money, because good cranks are very hard to find. I can explain why you should do this, but that takes a while, but if you want me to explain, I will.

Jensen

Nice find ! Are you installing the kit ?

For others I attached a dynorun of the 14C carbs (unmodified) which shows clearly the flat spot @ 4000 rpm.....which is actually somewhere between 3000 and 4000 rpm (to be precise @ 3500 rpm..), but's that's maybe bike specific.

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Yes Nigel,

I agree, how could I not. I have dismantled many 450 engines the past decade, and all have more or less the same issue's. Looking at the damage, anyone can tell, even with an untrained eye, that lubrication is (one of) the culprit(s). However, there are some designer issue's too, particular focussing on the valve train and crank set-up. On top of that, the engine is very sensitive how it's handled.

My goal was to build an engine to spec, use a modern oil to break in the engine, and see what happened while covering miles. The changes I made are not dramatic, but going from the centrifuge oil filter set-up to paper filter set-up was mandatory using a modern detergent oil (no matter if synthetic or not).

Until today my bike is working flawless, no major damage to the cams and other parts. Every year I try to ride as much miles as I can, to make as many test miles as possible (and because I like to ride it).

Every time I adjust the valve clearance (once a year) I measure the clearance with a precision of 0,01 mm to see changes in the valve play. I do see that the left exhaust valve clearance is changing faster then all three others, despite the used oil. But the speed of wearing out is much lower then all the examples I have seen.

I do ride a lot of highway and back roads, using the bike as they did in the past, as a rider, not as some show bike, low revs and short distances. I don't take the bike to classic rides, since the average speed is very low, and high way's are commonly avoided.

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