Finally after too many years I'm working on my 500/4

[Bitsa (Ralph Wright - RIP)]

 Mattewmosse
Christ in all my time that is one of the worst I have seen wish you all the best
Cheers
Bitsa

[matthewmosse]

Other side was just as bad when I did it many years ago, most of this had rotted from the inside, on a solo bike it might have gone un noticed, but the sidecar mounting up there mean I was really looking hard, with a spiked hammer for any thinning of the metal. I think a lot of it is down to riding in snow and ice when any sensible person has wrapped their bike up for winter, but I was enjoying the unique handling of sidecars on 2 inches of snow and ice, sadly the salt can get inside these steel pressings. By Christmas this bike will ride again, I will probably drill drain holes in all the repairs, plus fill holes, and give her regular doses of sump oil internally. She'll never be concouse but I intend to keep adding miles to the old girls clocks.

[matthewmosse]

Welded up a new footpeg hagar and fixed that on, did a far better job than the other side and I think you would need to be looking quite closely to spot it is a repair. The rear shock mounting is also now structurally repaired and just needs the tail section to put in next. I must admitt I am quite enjoying doing some proper tin bashing, and the chance to actually use that heavy old swage block in my workshop.

[UK Pete]

Wow just noticed this post, you have a fair bit of work to do on the frame by the looks of it, do you think the heat from welding might distort it a bit?
pete

[JamesH]

Wow just noticed this post, you have a fair bit of work to do on the frame by the looks of it, do you think the heat from welding might distort it a bit?
pete

You've been quiet lately Pete - where you been? Got the sandcast finished yet? ;-)

[UK Pete]

James i have not long been back from a nice hot sunny Mediterranean holiday, unfortunately i have got involved in a bigger project ( nothing to do with bikes) which has swallowed all my money and time, i will resume the sandcast and k0 projects late autumn
pete

[matthewmosse]

Almost finished welding, I basically re fabricated all the pressed steelwork down the rear left of the frame, using a spare frame to copy. For convenience I used my Oxford oil cooled stick welder and did the welds mostly in 1 inch sections trying to keep distortion in mind. Getting the seams to look right is the biggest pain, last time I didn't bother, this time my workshop has more kit so I am able to get most of the z profiles fairly close to how honda did them. Just to crown this off I found the frame I am copying also has rust to the footrest hangers so I will probably be doing it all again soon for the k reg 500/4. Last repair like this I did was brase welded to better avoid distortion. This time I figured if I found it was badly out of true, I shall bend it right with a bit of heat.

[matthewmosse]

Another 3 hours put in today, all welded and welds ground off, annoyingly spent an hour grinding out slag inclusions in a few welds and re welding, seems the rustier bits the weld metal just boils up and makes a porus mess, in the end I just cut out and let in big repair sections. I only kept a bit of th e original metal in any case, replacing each section 1 at a timecto try to maintain everything in position. If I did this again I think I would manufacture a complete subframe - doing both sides and the cross brace, probably faster than patching things up in the long run. Just crush tubes to add for the footrest hangar and indicator mount. Everything is nice fresh steel off a old golf course mower I recently bought off ebay, lovely quality steelbthat happened to be the right gauge, with the added irony of cutting up a machine that cost £10k new to fix something that was under a grand new. Next I shall wire bush in a drill clean it and bung on a few coats of red oxide and satin black paint. I will also fill the new frame sections with spray grease before welding in the crush tubes. What was alarming about all that corrosion is externally it looked ok, it was only a pointy hammer thar revealed the thing was bean can thin from internal rust. For some reason the computer won't let photos be saved smaller so they must wait.

[matthewmosse]

Finally started on applying paint. Went wire brushes in a drill route, seems the frame had previously had powedercoat, where this had lifted I found a few rust traps but most was in good order outside of the reat subframe area so I scrubbed all the thing up to give a good key and have applied a rather nasty looking coat of red oxide primer, it does rather well on killing rust, and once thinned gives me the best chance of getting some corrosion protection inside any joins which is where water let in by capillary action seems to have done dammage. A top coat of gloss black or 2 and I shall then start the rebuild process. Noticed the swing arm has drain holes, will be filling these with thinned red oxide then draining and once dry, a bit of old oil. Keep the rust fairies at bay. Good thing about this cheap and fast way of painting is it will be easy to touch up if dammaged.

[K2-K6]

Sounds like you've got the frame back up to scratch Matthew, my dad always painted everything with red-oxide when I was younger and it seemed to last for ever.

Image sizes, alot of cameras have a resize option in the menu and you can bring it down to something like VGA file size without having to bother with changing it on a computer at all, be good to see some photos as you get along.

[matthewmosse]

I do the photos on my mobile, then when the laptop is willing to play ball I reduce them and post. Sadly last few times it refused to save the modified images. Think the cable for the phone was giving poor connection. Almost all my IT stuff is out of date, bar the samsung tablet I am using, it might well have immage editing abilities but I have yet to find it.

[matthewmosse]

ms paint will only re size 1 immage then it just gives a save interrupted error message. so annoying. frame now got a topcoat of rutoleum black, cos that was all I had, came in a box of sundry garage junk in a sale - cost £1.
now I just have to re assemble / clean the rest of the assemblies, hoping this will be faster, having a curious 4 year old around the shed makes welding and power tools needed for frame repairs a no go area. I think he may enjoy the bike comming together and more especially running, he loves the ntv at the moment and has already mastered nicking the keys and sitting on the tank to start it. This bike has already got wireless remote starting up to 200m and a sidecar - well needing re fitting.

[matthewmosse]

another shot of the repaired frame, right side as you sit on the bike is an old repair, left side is this recent repair, I would hope if I tried this again to do a neater job. Just from my first repair and the second attempt there is a lot of inprovement but it is a fairly complicated job. If I tried another I would quite likely re make entierly all the pressed sections in new metal. On this one the outline of the frame is original metal with about 4 sections of infill new metal. I think it would give a better finish and be faster to replicate the pressings, grind off the old and weld on new, though I found the frame tubes also needed repair.

[matthewmosse]

Well, got a brake linkage back in and that no longer has the 5 inches of play thanks to a chromed replacement pivott off ebay and a new tube welded in. Down to 1 inch of sideways play, room for inprovement but no longer in the realms of mot stress. I suspect much tighter tolerances might make the pedal slow to return, not to mention needing a 1/2mm smaller drill, if not 1/4mm which starts getting expensive. I think the bike may be back on the road for under £100 expenditure at this stage. The wheels are looking crusty, chrome coming off in flakes, the tyres will need to come off to inspect internal rust, and they're in for a coat of black paint, they were pitted as anything 13 years ago when they arrived as part of my 550k3 anyway, sure the originals are about, hopefully with better chrome, but they'll do a few years before they get re built. The re lining job I did on the back brake looks in good order. Todays job was to re fit the bike frame to the sidecar chasis, found one sidecar fitting is too large, not on a repaired bit of the frame or anything, got a sleeve to make now to tighten it up. Another cost saving will be a car battery in the sidecar, left over from scrapping the family run around it should outlast the precession of lead acid std batteries that at most pulled 2 years service from the collection of dead ones  I have, at £40 a throw, give or take depending on if I was feeling fush enough to buy yuasa or cheap junk, car batteries are going to be some saving, they can take more abuse, cost less and probably will last longer.

[matthewmosse]

Been pricing bits up online, even if I still had a valid honda owners club card with the 10% discount, we moto still looks to be cheaper for headstock bearings for the 500/4 and 250 nighthawk, especially if dave silvers still have thathigh postage for big orders policy. Back when I last ran the 500/4 it was dave silvers every time, but prices seem to be a bit up these days. £125 for a camchain tensioner, they used to be £50. Makes my stockpile of engines bought @ £150 plus postage seem a sound investment. Most are not that worn.