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Re: The Poor Boy - A Tale Of A CB550- GOT THE TITLE BUDDY!!!!
speed wobbles are the shits. What road surface do they use where you are? I know that my GL will get a bit of a wobble, with good tires, on Conrete freeways, PA for example is bad on some of their freeways. On Asphalt or chipseal the bike is much more settled. That being said, the woblle occurs at 85+MPH so if I keep it to 80 or lower in PA I am fine. But I still want a damper and a brace to help tighten things up.
Re: The Poor Boy - A Tale Of A CB550- GOT THE TITLE BUDDY!!!!
Nope, you can find them all over ebay and get clamps for your fork size there too. I just haven't had the coin to drop on one yet. I had a few bookmarked but the auctions have long since expired. Joe used on on the GL he did I think From a Gixxer, lots of guys upgrade and sell the factory ones cheap. Try one of those first as they are more than adequit for our old bikes.
Re: The Poor Boy - A Tale Of A CB550- GOT THE TITLE BUDDY!!!!
the fall away adjustment should be located in your service manual it is used to ensure the trees are alligned correctly and the bearings are propperly seated
The Poor Boy - A Tale Of A CB550- GOT THE TITLE BUDDY!!!!
So happy. After a long few weeks at work, I came home to do grad school homework... I got through one thing I had to do and I realized I couldn't look at the computer for another second! My sanctuary? Hit the garage.
I tore the fork bottoms off and swapped out the fork seals that I blew out from putting too much fork oil in there (like an idiot). Put everything back together and tried to pop off the fork cap. I have a GL1000 front end and they have the STUPID recessed Allen key to get the cap out. So I stripped that fucker out. GREEEEEEAT. So I had to drill it out and extract it.
I ordered new ones that were cnc'd from a dude in Oregon b/c apparently I am not the only person who had this problem. Should be here in the middle of the week. Suck that I have no weekend riding now.
Re: The Poor Boy - A Tale Of A CB550- GOT THE TITLE BUDDY!!!!
JRK5892 said:
the fall away adjustment should be located in your service manual it is used to ensure the trees are alligned correctly and the bearings are properly seated
You did loosen top yoke pinch bolts before you tried to remove fork top nuts?
There is just enough distortion on threaded part of fork tube to keep them too tight (common mistake for non-motorcycle techs)
Harley Davidson is the only manufacturer to use 'fall away'.
Suzuki use a spring balance at end of handlebar on some/most models
Any torque spec for bearing adjustment nut is almost always to seat bearings (usually taper roller)
Honda and Suzuki use around 35~40 ft/lbs to seat then adjust by hand
You can only adjust with the front wheel in the air, have to jack bike up under frame tubes somehow (I use side stand and jack under opposite frame rail)
Re: The Poor Boy - A Tale Of A CB550- GOT THE TITLE BUDDY!!!!
I dont think pj is talking the same thing. The fork spring bolt/oil bolt / cap bolt is a shit design on these forks. You need the either clamped.in the triples or.in a vice to.remove them but.the.little allen head hole cant handle the torque required to remove them when they have been sitting for years. Honda dropped the design the next model year change and never used it again. Wasn't your fault. Was hondas shit choice in desivn. If you were pulling them every few years it would be fine. Yours were probably 15 20 years between removals. Use the new ones and move.forward. cheers.
Re: The Poor Boy - A Tale Of A CB550- Ride, Tweak, Rinse, Repeat.
Got a chance to work on the bike last night. I finished a class on Wed so I have a week and a half to veg out in the garage.
Messed with the carbs a bunch as I am getting a flat spot around 4K rpm and I knew that the float level wasn't right. I got the floats at the right height and dropped the needle down to the last notch. This seemed to really help and although I still get a little bit of a flat spot through 4k, it's much better than it was before. I am playing with the air mixture screws, backing them out a quarter of a turn at a time and that seems to be evening it out a bunch. I'm at 1.5 right now.
I'm hoping to get a front fender made during this time off, put on the rear fender, powder the rear brake rod and the fork brace and tweak the seat mount. If possible, I want to get the wife's bike running too... ambitious, I know.
Re: The Poor Boy - A Tale Of A CB550- GOT THE TITLE BUDDY!!!!
Maritime said:
I dont think pj is talking the same thing. The fork spring bolt/oil bolt / cap bolt is a shit design on these forks. You need the either clamped.in the triples or.in a vice to.remove them but.the.little allen head hole cant handle the torque required to remove them when they have been sitting for years. Honda dropped the design the next model year change and never used it again. Wasn't your fault. Was hondas shit choice in desivn. If you were pulling them every few years it would be fine. Yours were probably 15 20 years between removals. Use the new ones and move.forward. cheers.
Re: The Poor Boy - A Tale Of A CB550- Ride, Tweak, Rinse, Repeat.
I only use Allen socket, if they are 'stuck' pour boiling water over fork tube (fork has to be removed for that though)
Main problem is people over tightened them 20+ yrs ago, I forget numbers but torque spec is real low
Re: The Poor Boy - A Tale Of A CB550- Ride, Tweak, Rinse, Repeat.
crazypj said:
I only use Allen socket, if they are 'stuck' pour boiling water over fork tube (fork has to be removed for that though)
Main problem is people over tightened them 20+ yrs ago, I forget numbers but torque spec is real low
Re: The Poor Boy - A Tale Of A CB550- Ride, Tweak, Rinse, Repeat.
Got some time in this weekend. Had a list of shit to do and got a decent amount of stuff done on it. I walked in thinking I was going to glass up a front fender and quickly realized that all of my resin was gone and before I could get my keys to go to the store and get more, I turned around and saw an old front fender and figured, "eff it, I'm giving it a try". Turned out pretty decent.
Took off the brace and plugged the holes:
Then chopped it down a little bit:
I wanted to mount the fender to my fork brace so I spent a bunch of time figuring out the mounting situation and then I forgot to take pictures of that whole thing... Sorry. I'll get more when it's completed (I know you all are on the edge of your seat for them). I tried to not have to use any of the fender braces but a friend convinced me that using one on the rear would be a good idea. In any event, on to paint:
Etch:
Filler:
Paint:
Brace:
I'm going to mount it up and powder the brace tonight. Pics to follow that.
Re: The Poor Boy - A Tale Of A CB550- Ride, Tweak, Rinse, Repeat.
I was going to get Coneg reverse cone mufflers for this thing but after spending time getting the carbs all sorted out, I really dont want to go through the trouble of re-jetting this thing for a little bit. For $40, I got Biltwell hollow tips and I think they look pretty freakin' cool! Then I finally put the header wrap on... well I didn't, I had my "Header Wrap Specialist" do it for me.
Header Wrapper:
I put it all back on but again, didnt take pictures before I went to bed.
I also got new grips this weekend. I was really trying to make the hockey tape thing work and while I liked the look, the functionality was sub-par and my hand was cramping up big time.
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