Honda-SOHC

While the silver paint is not the original finish for the sliders, the finish you have achieved is really good considering that they looked as if they had been stored under the sea for a long time.

I know what you mean, got suspicious when the V5 stated the last owner was a Mr J.Cousteau 

Well it has been quite a while since the last update, work has been progressing but a couple of family dramas have had an impact which has slowed things down a bit. Anyway below a few pics of some other bits that have been done.

Firstly the front brake caliper assembly. The piston was well seized in the caliper but a good blast of compressed air soon got it out and then stripped the caliper and mounting down to bare metal. Also sourced new piston, seal, spring, and adjuster bolt to go in.

Before painting was looking very tired


But after a bit of graft and TLC unit came out quite nicely and quite pleased with the end result


Might yet re-plate the caliper bolts, but nearly there

Next up were the front forks. Whilst the chrome was actually in really good condition after a quick clean, the lower sections were in a real state.


So another strip down and also purchased new top nuts and seals as the ones fitted were way beyond any kind of help. Ideally I wanted to restore the lower sections to original, but the condition was too poor to get a satisfactory finish, so resorted to refurbishing and painting and whilst not OEM I have to say again really pleased with the finish.



Next instalment - the seat!

If it makes you feel any better Julie my 45k restoration project was equally mullered when I stripped it down and funnily enough mine also had 3 pistons and crowns damaged.







Mine had sat since 1997 and wasn't run for 9 years, promptly broke and sat for another 9 years before I bought it, just proves these things need to be ridden to be in good shape

Loving the finish on those, blue is the best colour but then again I am biased

Not needing much of an excuse to go off at a tangent, having done a bit of a Google search on the ears I think they are off a CB500 or CB550 based on the pictures I have seen, they suit the bike really well, but not original so not going back on.

With that in mind I have had a dig through the boxes of bit and have found something that resembles the headlight bracket as below. From my understanding though, the headlight bracket should also have the indicator mounting stalks on them as well, whereas with what I found it looks like there has been some bodging going on, especially looking at the quality of the indicator stalk mounting bracket that looks like it was done as some rubbish school project. Can anyone confirm my suspicions are correct and I need to get a replacement?

So I will start playing a bit of a catch up on what has been done so far, will take a while so will spread it over a few posts to save boring everyone to death.

My first objective was really to get the frame stripped down completely and to break the components into smaller groups, then from their break everything into individual components. So after purchasing a new rack and containers to put everything in started the strip down process. First the tank, seat, battery, airbox, brakes, and headlight went into their respective bins without too many dramas so she was starting to look a little threadbare already. Everything taken off to this point looked salvageable to a point with a bit of effort, so far so good.



Next rear wheel came off without any problems, then the rear mudguards. At that point I found the outer guard was actually black fibreglass, so after holding back my gag reflex that went straight in the bin and a new item on the "Required" list. Also handlebars and clocks came off. From what I could see already almost everything had varying degrees of corrosion, from light surface rust to what looked like it had been left for a year in a salt marsh.



It seemed like I was going to spend the next 5 years just trying to clean up all the parts before I could even do anythig meaningful from a restoration point of view, when my wife came to the rescue with this 



So now armed with the ability to blast parts, started experimenting with various grades of grit to find what worked best on what material, finding the balance between removing old paint and corrosion without stripping back any metal. It was also time to invest in a new compressor, going from a baby 25 ltr 2 hp unit to a 50 litre 3hp unit, which allows for a much longer working time without pressure drop off, so now we were cooking!

Before



5 minutes later



Finally time to get back to the frame, and in a few hours she was looking super lightweight and time to start digging into the parts that had been stripped, but not after a liberal rust removal and rust curing session on the frame, I was not going to get it powder coated yet (reason will be revealed later), but no excuse to let it get worse



So that is all for now, going to sort through some other photos and prepare the next installment

Thanks for the warm welcome guys, no issues with the thread hijacking either, some interesting stuff there and proves I am still learning about the bike.

One of the key things for me which was decision made early on was not to rebuild but restore to try and keep the bike as original as humanly possible. Inevitably I have run into issues with this approach, but really wanted to keep the bike as it should be hence needing the full "nut and bolt" rebuild. As will be revealed however, that decision was not always as easy as it should have been and I did deviate from that approach, but for good reason.

Great to see so many other enthusiastic 400/4 owners as well, I feel pretty sure that I will be picking everyone's brains now the real fun has started, restoration and rebuilding