Renovation Time

[z1100r]

 
 Well rather than just talk about it I started it last night. My poor old 500-4 has been sat in the back of my Horsebox lorry looking very sorry for itself.

 I dropped down the back door of the lorry and was quite shocked at the state of my old bike. They tyres were flat and one had left a black stain on the floor. It was covered in cobwebs and straw/hay...it looked horrendous. I went and got a pump and blew the tyres up, I lifted the bike off its stand and heard petrol sloshing about in the tank. A sudden panic set in, that petrol is 4 years old at least, oh no, not again. I'd parked a bike up before (motoguzzi) with half a tank of petrol and the top of the tank rotted out. I carried on and wheeled the Honda out into the dark, and finally down to my garage. In the garage lights the bike looked even worse.

 Oh well I'll get the battery charged up.....hahahaha...no chance, first, when I pulled the sidepanel off it shattered into a about 10 pieces...man they go brittle, I opened the seat and found a huge mouse nest...my airfilter had been eaten. I cleared the nest and all the mess away.

 I attached my charger/starter to the dead battery and switched on ign. Hmmm idiot lights are OK, press starter, Hmm it turns over OK. Open filler cap and blow hard, petrol smells quite off, but its not rusty in there. Right lets see if she starts. Those carbs must be gummed to hell. Well I tried and tried for 10mins and then almost gave up, all it wanted to do was backfire everynow and then. This was going to be my last attempt....I pressed the button, and without even hearing the startermotor it burst into life and sat there at 4,000 revs as smooth as you like. I knocked the choke off and revs dropped to about 1000 and she just sat there and purred. Fooking superb.


Right I'd better see what I've actually got in terms of new parts. I go off to find stuff I bought 10 years ago. Well I found the new rear hub, I found the 4 new pipes and all the brackets and fittings, new revcounter drive, 2 complete sets of cables one for 500 and one for 550, Gasket sets, extra head o rings and camcover rubbers. I could not however find, my new mudguards, indicators, grab rail, headlight brackets, rear light bracket and other bits. I'm just hoping they haven't been chucked away in some box I didn't look inside of first. This was real panic attack stuff, the problem now is I have nowhere left to look so its looking bad - and expensive.

I took a couple of pics that I'll post up later when I've got them off the camera. I'm not stopping now until its a tidy respectable bike again.

[Spitfire]

This sounds much to good to be true ! I'm glad (and dead jealous) that you have been so lucky.

Cheers

Den

[florence]

Hooray, these bikes can take some punishment certainly.  Be careful about revving bike hard if it has been standing.

Many years ago my friend resuscitated a CB550 which had been standing for a few years.  He took it for a really serious blast round the lanes but when he came back after a few miles it was smoking like mad.  When we pulled the barrel off we found that all the piston rings had been gummed up and had now broken into lots of pieces.  Maybe a strip down of the engine would be a safe precaution?

I would love to see pictures.  If it's rougher than mine I will be very envious.

[matthewmosse]

Good start there, 500/4's are a tough cookie type of bike, I've bought 2 projects that have yet to get a look in and were pretty much sripped down to big lumps already, after a clean out of the oil galleries (stored with filter off) I simply bolted on what must surely have been the furryest carbs evet to the head, plus a set of pipes and a battery and tempoary fuel line and had a bench test of that engine to see what I was up against. It ran like a swiss watch, perfect tickover with a bit of a blow from the exhaust where I'd neither used new gaskets or indeed fixed 2 missing studs. The 500 carbs are probably the best I've found for coping with being stood, the 550k3 being really sensitive to old fuel or being stood.

[basketcase]

Tell me about the K3 carbs!! My bike had covered only 63 miles in the last 3 years prior to me buying it, what a pig to clean them out. She runs now but still needs a good tune up. I now have a problem with the clutch.....replaced the clutch complete (metal and friction plates), cable, basket and the snail cam. Adjusted as the manual now the gears are hard to engage, getting worse as the bike warms up?? Any ideas folks?

[z1100r]

 Mine are K3 carbs...loads better to tune due to screw in rather than push in main jets. Years ago i pulled all the primaries out and gave them a good cleaning and then set the carbs up perfect. The bike runs alot better with K3 carbs....in fact its alot better with K3 everything.

 The engine in mine is a K3 550 bored to 601 using Kawasaki 61.5 GPZ305 pistons. It has a camshaft that I had made by Joy cams which if I remember replicates the Yoshimura IOM cam. The clutch was beefed up by myself and the gears were also swapped for much beefier efforts. A mixture between 500 and modified 550 gears. Its a very grunty motor and shocks quite a few. Its the one I built to race in the early eighties. When it raced it had modified 750F2 carbs, still got those aswell. My original 500 motor is sitting on the garage floor looking exactly as it did when I took it out years ago...very shiny. Even when I rode the bike everyday it had another std 550K3 motor mainly because I got fed up with the stock 500 clutch. So my std original 500 motor has done sod all...about 8,000 miles from new.

see this page :- http://www.gareth.evans9.btinternet.co.uk/600gallery.htm


Here are some pics of the general state of it.....I'm ashamed of myself.










Who wants to hear it run... hehehehe

cb500four.wmv

[UK Pete]

Great pictures , you certainly have our work cut out if you want to make it shiney, one thing is for sure Florence will certainly be envious, its definetly rougher than his LOL
Pete

[deltarider]

What exhaust is that? Sure sounds nice.

[matthewmosse]

Hee hee, mines rougher than that! Florence eat your heart out. I'll not be shinyfing mine though, just reviving it for next winter with some mechanical sympathy, cleaned carbs etc.
I'd just ride that as it is appart from a major service to include air cleaner!
My 500/4 has 550k3 engine and carbs as a stopgap til I sort the original 500 motor which has done 160 000 or more miles mostly sidecar tugging.

[z1100r]

 Its a modified ordinary Motad. It is more noisy than std but acceptable to both the rider and public on the road. When you're really going for it it sounds sweet, not harsh and noisy, more or less perfect to my ears. Ugly looking thing though.

I just noticed those bloody Yamaha rear footpegs rattling. Had to fit those for the last MOT for some reason.

I found my mudguards...thank god..phew..panic over.

[florence]

I love it! Well done Sir, I would ride it like that.  You are very lucky to have a petrol tank that has not been re-painted but has that wonderful fading which takes years to develop and cannot be replicated.  As for the rusty bits, a liberal smearing of grease would be in order.

I really like the twin disc conversion.

I have a couple of questions.  I notice you have a 550 engine.  Does this cause any headaches with the insurance?

Does the 550 clutch not suffer from the slipping problem which is so very annoying on the 500?

[z1100r]

You would ride it like that....well I did that for about 10 years. Its not much worse now than it was then. I'm fed up with it being my rat bike now. In fact If I steam cleaned it and put some cheap wheels in it, it wouldn't look too bad. That Motad exhaust is pretty new, the engine is spot on, forks need a rebuild and and a bit of paint, Frame needs blasting and stoving, a new set of hbars and levers bolt on all my new goodies and it would look very good.

 A few years ago I spotted a brand new set of 550 carbs on Ebay...actually NOS. I bid around 100 quid but they sold for 265. The big bidder never turned up so i was offered them as next highest bidder. I just opened the box with them in last night, now they are bike porn....lovely looking things when they are spangly new.
 

The brake conversion is just K3 forks.

   I have 3 bike insurance policies each with 4 bikes on. The little Honda costs me nothing to insure. My z1100r costs nothing to insure, my Thunderace and RD500's cost nothing to insure. For some very odd reason my Yamaha RD350F2 powervalve is the highest risk bike I have and that policy costs more than the rest. When I rang them to query it the guy confirmed that the 350 was highest risk I had.

 Telling them my 1970's 500 Honda was actually 600 was like..yeah ..so what....!!!

 550 clutches are just as bad as far as slipping goes...the operating mechanism is vastly improved on the 550 though..you get a much smoother nicer control lever. My clutch is modded to prevent slip. First of all theres extra plates, secondly the steel plates are vapour blasted, and thirdly it has slightly heavier springs, they're  the basic things I did, I did other stuff too but cant remember exactly what.

 

[SteveD CB500K0]

I have the list below insured with Carole Nash. They charge me about

[florence]

I only wondered because having a different engine means it's been modified and sometimes they charge a lot more for modified bikes.

Footman James are pretty good and cheaper than Carole Nash who I was with for about fifteen years.  FJ offer discount to members of the Vintage Motorcycle Club.

[SteveD CB500K0]

I like the breakdown cover with CN. Last year I got a cheaper quote from FJ and CN matched it.