Montreal Manchild with an '81 Honda CB750K

Jimbonaut

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High fives from Montreal ;)

Great to be here, I've been riding bikes for 30 years but only recently bought my first - a 2001 Yamaha V Star 1100 Custom. Fixed it up and made it my own, but really wanted something with a bit more soul if you know what I mean. So bought this little beauty for a song -



- and pushed it 5kms home. I've sweated for this old girl already. Non-starter, so switched out the plugs, got a new battery, cleaned up the carbs and air filter and finally got her running yesterday. I'm new to all this so it's slow going but tons of fun, feel like a kid again with a whole sh!t load of new lego.

I'm planning on a brat build and have a million ideas on my head, most of which are going to need your expert help, guidance and honesty. Looking forward to the journey and thanks for having me.

I'm calling her Rhonda.
 
After going through the full tune-up procedure (grab a manual, they should be available in a PDF online for free download) you can make this as simple or as complicated as you'd like. Personally, I think a lot of people start off too ambitious and end up losing interest in their projects because they've dug themselves in too deep before they were ready. Start small. Sleek, smoked blinkers (if that's legal where you are) and a smaller LED tail light will do wonders for the look of that bike. Low rise superbike bars, lose the grab rail, and maybe a slimmer aftermarket seat and that bike is in business.

OR you can hack the whole rear end off, weld up a new subframe, monoshock, modern swingarm, USD forks, clip-ons, custom controls, blah blah blah.

Sky's the limit, welcome aboard!
 
Montreal winters mean I'll have months to work on her so I'm planning to do a bit of a number. Frame chop and seat hoop, and thinking of replacing the rear shocks with taller ones, maybe around 15" to straighten out the foundation line of the bike. Pretty sure the shocks I have on the bike at the moment are after market.

I have the Clymers and will be going through that to follow the full tune up. Gotta tell you, the sound of her running for the first time was music to my ears. Maybe not Beethoven, but waaay better than the Sounds of Silence =)
 
This was the first challenge, check out the state of these carbs -



- and this one was the prettiest =0
 
Yes those shocks are aftermarket and shorter than stock. 15" sounds like a WHOLE lot of shock though, you don't want to increase the swingarm angle so much that your chain drags across the top, you'll end up with some very undesirable chain wear and handling characteristics. I would go maximum 1" over stock. Should straighten it out just right, anything longer than that and you'll have forward rake which will negatively affect your steering.

Also, the Clymer is good for a lot of things, but there tend to be discrepancies between aftermarket manuals and the originals from Honda. Still would recommend getting the Honda manual (since it's free anyways) for peace of mind.
 
I'll definitely do that in that case, do you know where I download the Honda manual? Or maybe just the tune up section?

Thanks for the suggestion on the shocks - what exactly is the stock height? I'm really grateful for the input buddy, as I said this is a first time for me and I'm definitely all ears when it comes to the rights and wrongs on what to do. I'd heard that raising the height on the rear shocks can actually be a benefit to the handling, but within reason of course.

What do you ride?
 
'78 CB750, although the motor is out (and has been out for some time now) for a refresh. Tooling around on a KE100 to keep the blood flowing =D

Quick google search looks like stock length may have been 14" so your idea to go up to 15" may not have been too far off, just sounded really long for some reason.

Factory manuals here:

http://www.dotheton.com/forum/index.php?topic=44399.0
 
Welcome to DTT, Jimbo!
Are you the same Jimbonaut from CB750C.com?
 
The very same =)

Thanks for the welcome, very glad to be here and I'm learning stuff already. Forums are like having a small team of experts sitting on my shoulders - without you guys (and YouTube - thank you YouTube) I'd look like one of those monkeys out of 2001 A Space Odyssey, hitting things blindly with sticks and seeing what happened
 
Cheers for the Honda manual link Coyote - I used to run a Kawi up and down volcanoes in Indonesia, man that was a buzz
 
And for fear of sounding like a total wally (it won't be the last time I doubt), is this the checklist I should be going through? -

http://www.cb750c.com/publicdocs/CB750_Manual/Honda1979thru83CB750ServiceManualChapter03InspectionandAdjustment.pdf

It's the Inspection and Adjustment section of the manual.

Thanks,

- J
 
I'm in Montreal often. Just landed from Vancouver (1am now) to be home for 12 hours then I'm flying into Montreal for the evening Friday.

Maybe on a longer trip there we should get the other Montreal members together. I think there are a few.
 
Welcome in mate, clean looking starter bike you got there, plenty of knowledge on here so your not gonna be left high n dry remember to take plenty of pic's ask lots of questions but make it your own style ! you the one riding "RHONDA" enjoy the journey always here for Q&A's mate .
 
Cheers guys - Tim you should definitely let me know whenever you're in town and jonesing for a ride. There are some great roads all around here - up north we've got the Laurentian mountains and to the south are the Eastern Townships...east towards the Gaspe peninsula, man it's all good =)

Thanks Yorkie, I'll definitely take you up on that...learning as I go along here and wanting to do as much work as possible on the bike myself. Will need some help as I go along for sure so thanks again. Going through Inspection chapter in the owners manual yesterday, I got to the cam chain adjustment and realized a previous owner had stripped the thread holding the tensioner bolt. There was a lot of oil on the front of the engine and I guess that was responsible for at least some of it. I've already been told that I'll need to re-thread it with a helicoil so that's on the to-do list, and hoping to get a mechanic over to have a listen to the engine and run a compression test on the cylinders (I don't have those tools sadly).

I'll definitely post pictures as I go along =)

Thanks again, and high fives from MTL,

- J
 
Since no one offered a high five back, i cant leave you hanging like that ;)
High five from Sherbrooke, just down the 10 from ya
 
Good man Farmer, right back at ya =) Lovely part of the world you live in, spent a lot of time in the Eastern Townships this summer riding with a buddy of mine. You woke up to a dump of snow this morning? Dammit, this winter thing sucks.

Ran my compression test over the weekend, here's how the numbers look (tested on a cold but cranking engine) -

cylinder 1 - 120
cylinder 2 - 120
cylinder 3 - 130
cylinder 4 - 100

I'm no mechanic but I think those numbers could be a lot worse...
 
#4 is cause for concern. I would put a few squirts of oil in the spark plug hole and run the test again. If the compression goes up at all, the rings are worn or stuck. If you're going to do rings on one, you may as well just have all the cylinders/pistons measured and proceed accordingly.
 
52910428ffe3ccbeec8a3bd4b31af568.jpg


Ya,just a wee bit of snow here...
Assembly time has arrived prematurely

+1 to what advco said
And when in doubt, replace/fix

I was a big fan of "if it ain't broke..."
Then my TC digested half a ring.
Just out of curiosity was the throttle wide open when doing the test?
If not, it can lower the reading on your gauge.
 
Aaaaaarghhh it's the white stuff. Probably not the last we'll see this winter either. Had to plough 6" off the car this morning...man California must be nice this time of year...

Actually no, only cranked the engine, throttle was definitely not fully open. In fact I don't remember revving the engine at all...
 
Ya... engine should be off
Remove the 4 plugs so it turns over easier

Crack throttle wide open
Turn it over for 10 secs or so.
 
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