Honda-SOHC

Ok. Now I'll try and flesh-out the post I made the other night....

So the forks are clearly bent on the bike but Hannah (previous owner, looks terrible referring to her as 'she' in every other line  ) bought a good used pair a while ago and these were included in the bundle I trailered away. Still to get the keys and V5 actually 

Even tho the 'new' forks are pretty good they do have rust specks on the stanchions so should really be sent away for hard-chroming. This costs around £200, once you've factored-in P&P both ways. Now the first thing I really want to do here is get the machine up & running so putting on straight forks is a good starting-point but that means they need to come back off again later if they are to be re-chromed. I could perhaps send the original stanchions away to be done but I'm not sure if they can be straightened by the company doing the chroming, or if they can even be straightened at all. However a glimpse at John Webley's RD125 thread showed something about forks getting straightened so I'll need to have a better look at that.
 
What ever the case I decided to remove and strip-down the originals....   

This was pretty straightforward compared to when I tackled the forks on my 1976 RD250C. Main difference is that although the arrangement for securing the damper to the fork-bottom looks the same from outside it's not.

Both have a recessed Allen-headed (6mm) screw under the leg. On the RD250 when you turn this the damper assy spins round inside the leg so you need to knock-up a tool to hold the invisible part still. On the CB I just used the long leg of an Allen key as I didn't have a long bit for my ratchet. The screw is pretty tight so I put the key in vice and turned the leg.

Moving back up the leg you can prise out the rubber 'cover' that sits in the alloy outer- tube. I was surprised to find wadding under this.

Anyway once the damper assy is no longer fixed to the fork tube you can pull it out and then tackle the actual fork seal.

There are all sorts of views on this online. One guy on YouTube actually jacked the seal out by filling the leg with oil and leaving the stanchion in. He nearly wrecked his shed in the process but it's an entertaining video.

Some say using the stanchion like a slide-hammer will pull the seal out but I don't see how this would work on the CB as the stanchion and damper just pull out together.

To get the damper out the stanchion you remove the top-cap from the stanchion revealing the spring and once that's out the way the damper will slide out too but you need to take off the little alloy piece at bottom. This will fall off anyway unless you put the screw back in for safe-keeping.


   

that looks like you have been working hard !!

 carry on !!!

 but at 3am

Lol. Well it was about midnight I finished up. Had a day off and went to the barn in afternoon to address a few hundred overdue tasks. Got there to find the electricity had ran out and the top-up key was at home so 4 miles home and 4 back I eventually got started. Spent daylight putting up fascia-boards on the gable end to stop Swifts nesting there (they are due back any day now!) then inside to start on Francis. Had no plans to stay as long and when I left to go home the car was iced-up but I quite enjoyed my time there. I only had 2 t-shirts and 3 jackets on to keep warm     

Hello mate, could you take the measures from the front fork decals?
If you do it, I will send a pair free for you
Best Regards.

Yes no problem Piki. Or I could peel one off and send you it...

That's a long way to come, from Wales!

Thanks Bryanj. Afaik the nominal size of the valves/guides is 5.5mm. So they'd need to be reamed to within some recognised tolerance of that.

Thanks Tomb  . That's the sort of reply I like. ie it's do-able if you observe rules x, y and z.

Hi guys.

Quick backstory here. My then girlfriend's daughter went very quickly from being a non-rider to a Yamaha 600 rider. She was only 17 or something when she embarked on this. Think it was less than a year later she was on the 'big' Yamaha.

Anyway. To start off she bought a 125 locally. Being experienced with bikes (ie have had loads in bits for 30 years and never even sat CBT) I was asked to give it the once-over.

I didn't know anything about the bike but it seemed modern to me (ie wasn't behind a shed rusting to bits) and I had a quick spin on it. She (well her Mum) coughed up £600 for it which seemed quite high to me and that was it. Well not quite. It sat idle for months while she passed test and I had to revive it once she was road-legal as it wouldn't start.

It wasn't great cosmetically having had the typical budget re-spray: Non-standard colour with an attempt at decals. The engine also had some shiny black paint on it. Not very well done.

So while she had it the only repairs I recall doing were: re-welding frame at centre-stand pivot as she got caught out by stand flapping loose one horrible winter night; making a side-stand from Honda parts (CM185 iirc); replacing speedo cable; swapping clocks-pod after she'd had a bump.

Next incident was she had a big bump and bent the front forks so Francis, as she called him, was retired to the base of the local bikers' club that she and her fiance were members of. Despite their collective wealth and knowledge of bikes no-one managed to get Francis mobile again and he was shifted to my barn to be resurrected.

Not long after that her mother and I split up and some time later he was retrieved by the owner and her man in a hired van.

So the rebuild never really got off the ground but I always wondered what would happen with it.

Well fast-fwd a couple or three years and the young couple are now married and off to live in NZ (possibly) so had to have a major clear-out and donated Francis back to me, along with a pile of parts she'd bought to rebuild him.

I picked him up on an old trailer I have and hope to get him roadworthy and perhaps re-spray the 'tinware'

I've got loads of pics from various stages of the story above but prob best to start with the ones of the day I collected it.



   

Francis returns to my barn after owner gives up on him