Honda-SOHC

Yes, been a long time. Thought it might as well all go in the same place. Been a few job changes, redundancies and changes in area of employment along the way, care is not my job any more, I'm now self employed- still no money but how it's because I invest it in tools and equipment rather than the wage being so pathetic.
Steadily ticking jobs off the list as far as working condition is concerned, yes, it looks slightly more barn find even than before, doesn't bother me, sounds great, looking forward to riding it again. Had a few bikes while this ones been laid up, non as good though. Ntv650 is the next best bike I've had.
V5c is in my name.

With Avon sm mk2 tyres I used to search out 10 year old part worms, reason being buy new  and they were out twice as fast, plus it was far more fun in the wet if I could slide the back end a bit, use them on both my solo BMW80rt and my 500/4 sidecar. Enormous fun. My cb550 riding mate liked to take the piss out of the BMW being ugly, til I gave him a lift on it for 10 miles, me giving it a bit of abuse he realised why I kind of liked it, it could lean right over in corners or roundabouts and my cornering technique of dropping 2 gears in to a hairpin and skidding the back end left skidmarks that wern't on the tarmack😂🤣
 Probably not sensible but it was fun and even in snow it gripped better than my cb250 with Pirelli city deamon rears or my ca125 rebel, which both always had new tyres. Only time I came off and did dammage was on that cb250 nighthawk. My gs125 came with original 1982 brigedstone tyres and front drum brake. That wasn't fun, was really glad to fit a newer bikes disk brake front end on that one! The front tyre was the stuff of nightmares too. Still have the wheel and tyre somewhere I think, the bikes one of the few I sold for more than I paid for it.

I'd just drop the old engine and drop another in. Not even necessarily even the same make or model engine. Same hp or similar. I recently swapped the engine on my mini digger from a Honda 5hp to a teschumench 10hp, basically because I found a tesumench 10hp engine on Ebay for £75 that was new old stock, more power seemed a smart move. Most of these stationary engines are fairly generic and a bit of fettlling to swap engines  can be way cheaper than doing engine work properly. Next up is dropping a diesel onto my grass mower in place of a worn old Kohler. Tesumench seems cheap engine and parts still seem to be around on Ebay, even if theres a wait for them to come from USA.

It's a money making machine, political pressure though your mp or court action might get some movement, it was someone standing up to them in court over scorn fines that got the automatic sorn fine changed. They basically took a freedom of info request on how many letters dvla lost internally and the courts then found that a system that automatically fined us as soon as a sorn isn't done on time wasn't legal, now we get a reminder to sorn. Dvla can be a beurocratic nightmare and the system won't change unless they are forced, if you can get to talk to the staff they can be ok.

One of my cb550s came with comstars, think it was a pretty straightforward bolt in fitting, but as the bike was a complete basket case theres not much guarantee what I started with. Personally I thought it looked pretty good and it used standard cb550 tyre sizes so the speedo worked ok. Pretty sure Ihave 2 sets of those wheels still here. I also ran twin disks on mine. The forks were cb550 ones, seem to remember the pads needed a light touch with a file to sit neat on the disks - these days I would skim a few mm off the hubs for the same effect.

Definitely a part where it pays to use a 6 point socket and I have bought engines or rocker covers where they were ludicrously tight either gorilla tightening or corrosion. An open jaw spanner or 12 pointer is more likely to round them off. By the time your wrenching them off with a pipe wrench and the top looks like it's been chewed by a large dog, I geuss silvers will be getting a call for new ones- though I have seen them put back in that condition.....

Worth doing your own rebuild, I used a swing arm mounted In a vice as a jig, and a bit of welding rod as a pointer. I was tight and managed to re use my original spokes - though I seem to recall I had to cadge a couple of spares off a second wheel, which was mostly sized up too badly to save the spokes but saved enough. Gave me 2 hubs to re line. Ones still probably on a shelf awaiting the need to re lace. The cost was offputting.