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Z3n posted:This seems like the best option. Also, any insight on finding oddball piston wrist pin clips? Not sure if this would help? Or you could get some buttons made up to stick in there instead.
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Jun 27, 2016 06:06
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Yeah I found that site after some digging, I think the Ontario bore kit uses OEM piston clips. Get to call Cometic tomorrow and see what's up - also, the head gasket that was on the bike doesn't line up with the cylinder bores:  Look at these adorable little pistons though! 
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Jun 27, 2016 06:48
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Z3n posted:Get to call Cometic tomorrow and see what's up - also, the head gasket that was on the bike doesn't line up with the cylinder bores: A great deal more common than you might think, never seen it on a bike though.
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Jun 27, 2016 06:53
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Well, apparently Tims CBX uses Cometic 68mm gaskets on all their big bore bikes and it's pretty common to run a gasket that's slightly off size from normal in big bore bikes. Shrug! 99% sure that OEM piston clips will fit and if they don't, JE clips are .040 inches to the measured .038 inches on the clips that came out of the Ontario pistons. All top end parts are speced out as good, just have to finish stripping the cases, send crank, transmission, conrods, plain bearings, pistons, cams, rings, and wrist pins out for WPC, cases, cylinder, top end, valve cover, and engine covers out for vapor blasting...assuming a ~2 week turnaround on all that, should have the bike ready to be assembled by end of July. Have to send out swingarm for cutting, get swingarm spacer made, upper shock mounts made, a few minor adapters knocked up for front suspension, and dare I say it - the bike might be rideable! Fingers crossed for first ride in August!
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Jun 28, 2016 01:02
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Wrote this for the CBX forums, figured I'd cross post it here: Finally getting around to starting this project - I found a craiglist bike for relatively cheap, and a buddy commissioned me to build him a restomod CBX. Here's what we started with:  I sent the carbs off to Jack at Old school carbs to get rebuilt properly, as they were seized and terrible, and after he finished them up, reinstalled them on the bike, tried to start it up, and got nothing. After a few weekends of idly tinkering with the bike here and there, I eventually discovered that the bike had been rebuilt at some point in the past, and the previous owner had reinstalled the ignition jackshaft out of time, as is easy to do with the errors in the old manuals. A little hackery with some gaffers tape:  And she fired right up! At this point, though, I decided it needed to be torn down to be checked over right - in the process of diagnosing the ignition issue I had discovered a few other things, and realized I wouldn't be happy unless I completely checked every bolt and put everything back together myself. But before I came to that conclusion, I built something else:  This is, IMO, the supermoto that KTM should have built. If you'd like to read about it, more details are here. Here's a picture of my 1290 and the one I built at the track:  But apologies! You're not here for KTMs! Back to the CBX - I finally got the time to begin the teardown. Pulled the engine from the frame:  And pulled the engine apart - took some hammering to get the top end off, as the previous owner had spraybombed the entire thing.  At this point, I begin to spec out the bores, and I notice something strange...the honda spec says the pistons should be 64.5mm, but mine are just barely under 67mm. I double check my measurements, and sure as hell, the pistons and the very straight, nicely crosshatched bores are 67mm. What is this?!?! Props to anyone who can identify these pistons before scrolling down...  Anyways, as it turns out, there is an Ontario bore kit in the bike, taking it up to 1130ccs. They also a use head gasket which interestingly doesn't match the bores exactly:  Anyways, after some fears about locating rings and such (the ring look, thankfully, brand new - I doubt this engine has ever been run with the bore kit, as the crosshatch is so fresh that it looks like it has never run since the rebuild where they installed the primary shaft out of time), I managed to find appropriate replacement head/base gaskets, piston ring clips, and I'll be reusing the rings. As I'm a sucker for cool stuff, the external stuff is all going off for vapor blasting by Restocycle (Hey NobleHops!), and most of the internals including the gearbox will be going off for WPC treatment, as I've always wanted to do a build with that engine treatment. I don't anticipate any performance gain from it, but I do hope it provides more reliability and long term wear benefits. I'll be replacing the cam chains, and other wear items while I'm in the engine, hopefully setting the bike up for 50k miles of reliable normal operation with nothing more than valve adjustments and normal maintenance. Tonight I managed to pull half of the valves, got hung up on one of them that needed to have a high spot knocked down before it would move smoothly out of the valve guide:  I'll also be setting the bike up with a ZRX swingarm and forks, a Ducati Scrambler headlight, ABS, and a number of other things to get it looking like what I think we all dream of: A CBX made in 2016. I've got an open trackday that I do each year, and this year it's on October 3rd - the goal is to have the bike ready for that trackday. Following that test, we'll ride it around for a little bit, and then break it down again so the frame, wheels, and swingarm can be powdercoated, and all the parts can go off for a custom paint job, that is still TBD. I'll also be leaning on GP Frame and Wheel to do some measuring of the frame, to make sure it's straight, and to allow us to validate that rake, trail, and other numbers are in an acceptable range. Longer term plans include an RFID ignition, a more modern looking gauge cluster using the OEM gauges, and maybe a few other neat things.
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Jun 28, 2016 07:52
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God drat this is going to be fun to watch. I'm almost as excited to read about it as you must be to build it. 
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Jun 28, 2016 11:11
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Any real damage to the SMuke? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnl3F3BcJBg
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Jun 29, 2016 03:48
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Doh did I forget to post that here? No, no damage. Just wore down the crash cage, scraped up slider, was ridden same day  Edit: longer video to come, no idea when. Z3n fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Jun 29, 2016 |
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Jun 29, 2016 05:32
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Glad to hear nothing serious. I just caught it while watching the Sheet Iron vid. And the weird swan art car haha. That bike is too cool, like an abomination that should have never existed, but makes the world a bit more special.
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Jun 29, 2016 15:09
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Ha, thanks! Yeah - he does a lot of interesting stuff. This weekend's CBX update! Had a chance to take the engine from where it was in the last set of pictures to stripped cases of side covers/accessories:  Tagged and bagged parts:  Stripped side covers:  Rotating engine mount makes working on it easy:  That one bolt that's so easy to forget:  And finally, cases split:  The old mechanic's check of vertical play in the conrods shows no vertical play, which is good. Transmission close up:  Lift out the transmission:  Here's some pictures of the crank bearing mating surfaces (click links for HUGE): http://i.imgur.com/KidLpHT.jpg http://i.imgur.com/S28ZpAe.jpg http://i.imgur.com/hPZR7fz.jpg    And the corresponding side on the lower crankcase: http://i.imgur.com/KiL6WMY.jpg http://i.imgur.com/8hWAjV8.jpg http://i.imgur.com/LNdcD8V.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Kpz8axo.jpg     Transmission spec'd out perfectly, oil pump spec'd out perfectly (although someone had clearly been in there before, as one of the rotors was mounted in backwards, with the dot facing inwards). I also noticed these very nasty holes, that have all kinds of machining marks still remaining on them:    A quick perusal of ebay cases shows some others with the same holes, so I guess they're used for assembly or something. So, with that, dear reader, it is now time for me to ask you the questions: The bearings have some pretty odd patterns on them - they're not detectable by running your finger across them, but it is strange none the less. Anyone seen anything like this before? More work on this tomorrow - hopefully will have the cases bare, and can send the outside bits out for vapor blasting and the internals off for WPC treatment! Thanks for reading, as always! Z3n fucked around with this message at 09:11 on Jul 4, 2016 |
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Jul 4, 2016 09:02
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They mains caps look like almost identical to what you'd see on an archetypal japanese car that's done around 300,000km's with oil changes all the way and no abuse. Just worn down by time and good for another few clicks if you stick to the same routine. The little dots visible in huge on some of the mains to me look like spots of corrosion which formed when the crank sat still for ages, presumably when the bike was parked up for a long time with no prep. They've since been worn away but left pitting in the bearing to the same depth as the mileage wear.
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Jul 4, 2016 10:33
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Slavvy posted:They mains caps look like almost identical to what you'd see on an archetypal japanese car that's done around 300,000km's with oil changes all the way and no abuse. Just worn down by time and good for another few clicks if you stick to the same routine. Cool, thanks for the reassurance. Everything plastigauged out to well within spec (spec is .08, everything was around .05). Plastigauged all the bearings - everything at around .05, spec is .08, very pleased with that. Here's the photo for the oil pump:  As you can see, it indicates that it should be assembled cap -> plunger -> spring, but it was assembled cap -> spring -> plunger (which also seems to be the correct way by how the parts are designed). Another interesting thing that you can see is there is no locking ring on my primary shaft - it's just held in place by the bearing retainer.  Here it is assembled out of the cases:  Took me a minute to figure out what was going on there, looking for the ring nut that the factory manual claimed would be there. All parts are in good shape with no major wear. Besides that, cases are split, conrods pulled, bearings look exactly like the other bearings with some discoloration, but otherwise fine. Just gotta clean up the stuff, get it packed securely, make sure I have all of the parts I need on order, and off we go! Also have an ultrasonic cleaner on the way for most of the bolts. Any recommendations on fluid/usage from those reading?
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Jul 5, 2016 06:54
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Lmao at how t-shaped the whole thing is. It's weird to see an engine in a bike that's wider than it is long (boxers excepted)
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Jul 5, 2016 13:47
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Yeah it's a bit of a giggle to work on as a result. What is impressive is how heavy that crank is. Has to weigh at least 30 pounds.
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Jul 5, 2016 20:17
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For the ultrasonic cleaning solution, most folks I've talked with has used 2-1 water and simplegreen. I reload and just used a really weak solution of the brass cleaner I have laying about. The big thing with ultra sonic cleaning if you haven't done it before, is that it gets rid of any oil/grease impregnated in what you're cleaning. If the item corrodes quickly with not enough oil on it, it'll be a rut magnet after cleaning. Also anything that's a relatively thick pipe might not be cleaned thoroughly on the inside of the bore.
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Jul 5, 2016 21:27
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Wait so the primary drive is a chain? What tensions the chain? Also what is the purpose of the giant spring on the primary shaft?
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Jul 5, 2016 22:16
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:Lmao at how t-shaped the whole thing is. It's weird to see an engine in a bike that's wider than it is long (boxers excepted) I can't be 100% sure just from looking at those photos, but it looks like that engine is wider than at least a Honda boxer from the same era - that thing looks wider than the engine in my GL-1000.
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Jul 6, 2016 07:27
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Skreemer posted:For the ultrasonic cleaning solution, most folks I've talked with has used 2-1 water and simplegreen. I reload and just used a really weak solution of the brass cleaner I have laying about. Cool - I picked up the aluminum safe stuff, hopefully it's not garbage. Slavvy posted:Wait so the primary drive is a chain? What tensions the chain? It has a primary chain tensioner that's basically a bent chunk of plastic, tensioned by an oil pressure driven piston. Big spring on the primary pushes the starter sprag and clutch up against the bearing it rides against.
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Jul 6, 2016 07:51
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Parts sent out for WPC and vapor blasting. Got the ZRX forks fitted, loses about 1 inch of front ride height. Should still be in range of reasonable.  And momentarily throwing everything together for giggles - those bars are far too tall, but what can you do, it was the only set of bars I had on hand:  Getting rear swingarm spacer knocked up, then I'll need to get the swingarm cut and re-welded to clear the frame. Once parts show back up, ready for re-assembly, and we're off! Probably also going to have to machine up some sort of custom mount for a steering damper on the triples, as you do! Things are proceeding nicely
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Jul 14, 2016 08:45
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Have I mentioned lately that I hate the cam chain tensioner design on these things? Piece of metal, tensioned like a leaf spring, coated in plastic. Ffffff. Considering machining up something myself to fix the loving problem. Argh. Best deal thus far is 225 Euro, plus cross shipping time, to have my OEM one rebuilt. gently caress. Me.
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Jul 15, 2016 07:18
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Just popping in to say the thread is still awesome and you aren't just screaming into the void.
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Jul 15, 2016 08:44
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Well if I'm not screaming into the void what is the point lets be honest.
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Jul 15, 2016 15:50
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I use water and simple green in the ultrasonic, but a much thinner ratio of simple green. It doesn't take much. Also it's probably obvious but blow all the parts out with compressed air immediately after cleaning to remove the water and simple green cause they won't help if they sit in there.
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Jul 15, 2016 15:58
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Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester posted:I use water and simple green in the ultrasonic, but a much thinner ratio of simple green. It doesn't take much. Also it's probably obvious but blow all the parts out with compressed air immediately after cleaning to remove the water and simple green cause they won't help if they sit in there. Cool, I got the aircraft simple green stuff so I'll try that. Do you find you often have to replace / re-plate bolts that have lost their chrome / shiny coating?
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Jul 15, 2016 19:20
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  Oh hay! Shoulda got him to wheelie :|
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Jul 20, 2016 01:44
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Best post.
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Jul 20, 2016 04:02
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Hermsgervørden posted:My formerly very sad bike has left Z3n's Halfway Home for Crazy Motorcycles with an enormous grin on it (me). Thanks entirely to your help, my 40 months in the desert of not riding motorcycles is over and it really is a religious experience to be twisting the throttle again. I know I can probably never repay my indebtedness entirely, because watching you wreck your forearms and sanity changing my stupid narrow tires isn't really repayable. It was however fun for me! I've been too embarrassed to have posted about this, after all the work you put in for me getting my CB400 going again, Z3n but in August of last year my motorcycle was stolen off the street in my neighborhood. Days passed, and then weeks, and a month, and I gave up on ever seeing it again. It haunted me in my dreams. Well, this Thursday at 4:30 am the SFPD called to tell me they had arrested a woman pushing my bike through ingleside terrace. The plates were swapped, the ignition cylinder was punched (not)clean through, the dash lights are gone, there's some kind of janky hot-wiring switch, the tank was (poorly) rattlecan sprayed sparkle green. I guess the woman was pushing it because the battery is toast. I just pushed it to O'Hanlon's from the Auto Return, which thankfully is only 3 blocks. I'm waiting to hear back about all the awful poo poo I imagine my bike has been subjected to. I guess I have about another $1000 I can spend on it saved up again. Now I have to get the bike re-registered and get new plates, but I am never giving up on it now. It's a revenant bike, back from the dead (again!) and I think it needs to ride. Even in the sorry state it was in when I saw it, it felt good to lay eyes on it. At some point, I will want to get the poo poo awful paint off the tank, and I may leave it bare metal. Hey Z3n is that something you'd like to give advice on?
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Jul 24, 2016 00:19
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Oh man that's terrible  Phone posting now but will give this a proper reply a bit later.
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Jul 24, 2016 02:20
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Use a chemical paint stripper to take off the paint. Any kind of abrasive method (e.g. wirewheel) will ruin the look of the bare metal. Soda blasting *might* strip the paint off well enough without changing the surface, but chemical stripping is cheaper and easier if you can handle the toxicity. Once you're down to the bare steel, scour it gently with a brass brillo pad to take off any surface rust, and immediately coat it liberally with Gibbs oil. http://www.roadsters.com/gibbs/ It'll keep the metal from flash-rusting, and it can be painted over. If you want to do any polishing or finishing at this stage, make sure to keep oiling any newly exposed metal. Finish up with a 2-part urethane or epoxy clearcoat. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Jul 24, 2016 |
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Jul 24, 2016 03:43
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Sagebrush posted:Use a chemical paint stripper to take off the paint. Any kind of abrasive method (e.g. wirewheel) will ruin the look of the bare metal. Soda blasting *might* strip the paint off well enough without changing the surface, but chemical stripping is cheaper and easier if you can handle the toxicity. You've had zero issue with Gibbs oil and a 2-part clear over top of it? That's pretty drat useful.
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Jul 25, 2016 20:35
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Huh that stuff looks pretty awesome.
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Jul 25, 2016 20:56
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Slim Pickens posted:You've had zero issue with Gibbs oil and a 2-part clear over top of it? That's pretty drat useful. I'll admit I have never used it on automotive parts exactly like that. I have painted over the stuff, though -- I give the metal a basic wipedown with acetone to take off any dust and fingerprints on the surface, but I don't soak it in degreaser or anything like you would with WD-40. I assume any clearcoat that is suitable for bare metal (2-parts are going to be the strongest on an unprimed surface) will work just as well over Gibbs. Does a great job of keeping the metal clean, though. I have a friend who races hot rods on the salt flats and he swears by the stuff.
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Jul 26, 2016 07:12
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Z3n posted:Cool, I got the aircraft simple green stuff so I'll try that. Do you find you often have to replace / re-plate bolts that have lost their chrome / shiny coating?
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Jul 27, 2016 04:32
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Got the estimate for my CB400. $700 altogether to get it back to running order. I might be back on it this weekend! I'm really glad it didn't hit four figures. We will take the money out of the vacation fund, which means delaying our planned trip to Legoland until next summer. It's a good thing we hadn't booked the hotel yet, so we hadn't made the kids any specific promises yet. Also, they don't exactly have full command of how calendars work, so that's an information advantage I have over my kids. I do need a little more advice about stripping the paint off the tank. Any recommendations on paint stripping agents? How about clear coat? Also, and perhaps most importantly, is this something an idiot like me (Z3n, I trust you remember how much of an idiot I am) can safely do on my own in one day on the street?  (My daughter came with me to the impound lot) I don't mean to hijack this thread, so I'll probably stop posting about my bike now.
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Jul 27, 2016 20:43
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Just a heads-up: body and finishing work is probably the most time-consuming and painstaking work you can do to a motor vehicle. Consider what you're getting into. "Aircraft remover" is the most powerful and effective paint remover I know of. Stripping the paint off means removing and draining the gas tank, putting it in a big rubbermaid container, and sponging/brushing on the chemical (wear elbow-length gloves and eye protection!). After the paint starts to bubble up and peel, you can scrub it off the rest of the way with a nylon brush and water. Depending on how good the original paint was, you might have to put a second coat on. The used paint remover sludge should technically be treated as hazardous waste, but if you let it all evaporate it just kind of turns into gross chunky dust that you can probably put in the regular trash. You decide if you can do that in the street where you are or not. Certainly you can do it in the back yard, though. Flush the inside and outside of the stripped tank off really well with water, then dry it with a towel and immediately coat with a protective agent. If you re-apply the Gibbs every month or so, you may never have to do anything else to keep it from rusting (the inside will be pretty well protected by the gasoline). Clear-coating the tank is a whole other story; if you want that effect, and you only have the street to work in, I would skip doing it yourself and take it to a professional. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Jul 27, 2016 |
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Jul 27, 2016 22:14
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Awesome that it's not too expensive! No worries on hijacking the thread, it's half hijacked by me building other people's bikes anyways Sagebrush's advice on this is all solid.
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Jul 27, 2016 23:14
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Time for an update! I first recieved the parts back from WPC coating, which turned out fabulously:  Conrods/bearings:  Refinished bearings:  Oil pump parts:  Shift drum:  Wristpins, etc:  And shortly thereafter, another pile of boxes:  Pulling this stuff out of the boxes was pretty amazing:  For an example of how little the vapor blasting process changes the metal, here's some etching from the PO in the oil pan:  I also have to give a massive shout out to Restocycle here - Nils does amazing work, the parts look fantastic - in fact, the biggest thing that his work has exposed is how rough the OEM castings actually are:  After I saw the covers on his bike I had to have the same style with the lettering picked out in b lack, and he went through the process of pulling the covers back out of the box, and worked through five attempts before he got something he was satisfied with sending over. The parts are so clean, the wear from the years shows up to contrast the paintwork - this is going to be a bike to be ridden that should look nice as well, so I think the raw and used look is a good one:  I highly recommend him for any work you might need. I know he spent longer on the parts than he charged me for (I've been doing this for a long time, and I know how much work goes into doing things right, and he did the job right, unquestionably). I told him the goal for this bike was to get the engine looking relatively consistent to draw the eye to the engine as the massive block of engineering it is, and you can see that in the parts in the pictures - most of it is aluminum, but some of it is magnesium, and some of it is steel - and it all looks consistent, exactly as I asked him to do. Very pleased. Now I have to go through all the work of making sure that the parts that go into the these nice clean parts are actually clean enough to justify using them. :laughing He didn't even complain about how dirty the parts were...just compare this: To this:  Finally, on to the CCT: I've received a number of random cam chain tensioner parts, and now that I have the CBX parts back, it's time to start prototyping. We'll see how things go in the next few days
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Jul 30, 2016 10:25
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That looks so good. 
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Jul 30, 2016 11:34
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This makes me want to buy an old dirty beater just to clean it, while gently rubbing my nipples.
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Jul 30, 2016 12:22
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makka-setan posted:This makes me want to buy an old dirty beater just to clean it, while gently rubbing my nipples. For real.
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Jul 30, 2016 16:38
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