Thank you for the compliments. As I said at the beginning of this thread, my plan is to do it right this time around. Even if it takes awhile and cost more. I am very happy with how the wiring turned out. Now, the only electrical component on the bike that hasn't been replaced or refurbished is the alternator. I haven't had any issues with that and I hope it stays that way. With all of the lights converted to LEDs, it provides ample power.
The major item left to do is the paint. I plan on having the frame and many of the parts powder coated. But, I want to get everything sorted before then so that I do not have to take it apart again.
To that end, lately I have been working to get the carbs dialed in. I think they are pretty close, but my ability to tune carbs is a bit sketchy so I have been educating myself. As I was fiddling with them, I decided to double check the timing in case something had changed since I last had the engine apart. I have an electronic ignition system from Charlie's Place installed. As I was looking at the mechanical advance mechanism, I noticed the rotor with the magnets had some significant play to it. When I took it out I found that the rotor had deformed where it contacts the advance weight arms just like my old system from PAMCO.
In the picture below, the stock rotor (steel) for the original points system is on the left, the PAMCO rotor (aluminum) is in the center, and the Charlie's Place rotor (aluminum) is on the right.
You can see that the two aluminum rotors have significant wear from the advance weight arms, making the slots that they sit in wider. This allows the rotor to bounce around about 5 degrees.
I contacted Charlie's Place and he agreed to sell me a new rotor. I had to get a new plate too, because he changed the design a little. But I was able to reuse the old pickups. I got that reinstalled and the timing set dead nuts. It is running very well now.
I have a feeling the same thing will eventually happen to this one, but it is working well now. Since PAMCO doesn't seem to be in business anymore, the only electronic ignition system I have been able to find for the CB450s that has an electronic advance is from a German company and is fairly expensive at $440 (
https://www.elektronik-sachse.de/shopsystem-3/en/digital-ignition-zdg-3-23-for-honda-cb450-500t.html). I also don't feel like trying to mount the external computer box at the moment.
I did see that Common Motor came out with their own system. It still uses the mechanical advance, but it uses the stock steel rotor. That would be better, but their system requires you to install two external electronics boxes.
For now I will keep this system and continue on with the rebuild. I was able to go on a nice long 2 hour ride this weekend and the bike performed very well. Right now I only have two complaints.
1) It stalled when coming to a stop at a red light, two different times. It fired right back up, so I don't know what happened.
2) It doesn't have as much engine braking as I would like. However I think I just need to keep it in a lower gear as that seemed to help. I tend to use engine braking to gently slow the bike as I go into turns, but at higher gears/lower revs, the bike didn't really slow down and I had to use the brakes.
The engine braking issue may also just be from me getting spoiled riding the Z900RS that I bought a couple of years ago.
These two bikes are exactly 50 years apart and they are like night and day.
