More progress

So I actually had a few hours to work on the bike yesterday. I got the carbs off and opened up the right crank case cover to have a look in there (mostly because I want to polish up the right crank case cover). It looked very clean in there. I got a bit of dirt in some of the gears when I took the cover off because there was dirt hiding behind part of the case, but I brushed it out with a tooth brush. The intake valve chamber has quite a carbon build up. Wondering if I should try to use my rotary tool to get rid of it or just take the heads off completely to clean and re-build the top end...

Carbon build up in the intake valve chamber (if that is what it is called...).

Bike is looking pretty bare now.

 Sorry no pics of the inside of the right crank case.

Progress Report

So I've been doing a few things here and there. Mostly taking things off and cleaning. When I took off the exhaust the exhaust outlet inside the motor had quite a bit of black carbon build-up inside. Hope I shouldn't be too worried about that.

I also ordered a whole bunch of parts, mostly boring stuff like gaskets, rear shock mount rubbers, master cylinder cup, throttle cables, but the more exciting parts were new tires and new headlight housing.

I removed the collector and cleaned up the drive sprocket:

I definitely won't be re-using it:


Cleaned up the rear wheel a bit:

Before:

After:


Tried to get final drive sprocket out but I'm not sure how to remove the seal in front. Will have to look that up in the shop manual.


Cleaned up and wire brushed the Swing arm:
Before:

After:

Will definitely need painting. Plan on re-painting the whole frame actually.

Learning

So I've been watching Mr.Polecat's excellent and invaluable instructional videos to boost my confidence with rebuilding my carbs. There are 23 videos just for rebuilding the carbs! This is amazing. Thanks Mr.Polecat!

Still have lots to watch and learn before starting.

Thinking this still may be very challenging with no real shop space where I can't guarantee that my kids won't come along and spill my parts tray (or that I won't mess up on my own). That may need to be a prerequisite step before I even attempt doing this, finding a space.....wait a minute, my cold storage room is lockable! that might just be wear I will work on my carbs...

Sanding

Last night, I did a bit of sanding on the left crank case cover (AKA stator cover)

From this:

To this:

I used 400 grit wet automotive sand paper. Planning on slowly moving up to 2000 grit. I think I will be painting most of it black except for the round part so will only try to get that part really shiny.

UPDATE: this is after 600 and 1000 grit.

UPDATE: went up to 1500 last night

Next Steps

Ok so last week was a new milestone. I got the bike out of the trailer! And wow, do I have a lot of work ahead of me.

So far, I've determined that:
I'm missing:
a chain tensioner / adjuster:

bolts for the stator cover (or left crank case cover).  Also, the gasket on the stator cover is pretty much non-existent.

Headlight housing and handlebars. I do have the front chrome headlight housing but not the rear. The left headlight bracket is also broken.

The right side exhaust is rough shape and the left side is non-existent. Also, the collector looks really rough and the shields have been cut off with an angle grinder. I would like to get rid of it anyway and get after market exhaust but am also not looking forward to re-jetting the carbs.

I'll be relying on the shop manual as well as some on-line parts stores that have blow out diagrams for parts lists to figure out where everything goes.

At this point the wire harness is completed striped off but all the connectors look to be in fair to good condition.

I've tracked down the stator cover bolts and chain tension adjuster but before I spend any more money, my next and biggest priority is to get the bike back together so that at a bare minimum, I can get it to turn over and possibly even started. I'm not entirely sure what that bare minimum is but for starters I'll hook up the spark plug wires, battery, and as much of the wire harness up as I can. I'm sure having handlebars to connect the throttle too would be helpful as well.

Progress Report

So the bike is still in the trailer I brought it home in....

However, I've been doing a lot of research and learning. I watched an hour long video by Mr.Polecat on Youtube the other day on how to do Valve clearance adjustments. He rambled on a lot but it was all good learning. I've also been working on making myself a work space for the bike by enclosing the patio under my deck.

Last night I started working on the gas tank. I got as far as cleaning the exterior and peeling the original pin striping off. Here are some pics:

So I stopped by the autobody shop down the road from my work with it this morning and asked about getting it painted. The guy recommended getting the interior dipped or coated before hand and estimated he could paint it of about $150. Guess it's time to look around for an outfit that will coat it.

The Vision

So I found a this bike on the web.

It's pretty much the first one you get if you type in "Honda CM 400 Brat". Regardless, I think it's an awesome looking bike I pretty much want to take the bike in this direction except more black. Like this:

I think the owner's name is Pablo Hermosilla.  Looks like he's painted the tank a few different times. Hope you don't mine me using your image Pablo! Great looking bike!

Here is my tentative budget so far for this project. It's a work in progress.

Results of Vehicle record search

Great news! Last week I received the results from the vehicle record search. They found no record of registration in BC for the bike. So that means that I basically have the green light to start working on the bike! I also did a VIN search on the RCMP website for good measure and it can up negative (i.e. no record of the bike being stolen). I still have to fill out a statutory declaration and sign it in front of a Notary public which I'm going do this afternoon.

So I just sent away the vehicle record search request, the first step for registering a vehicle in BC without record of registration. Once I find out for sure the bike was never stolen, I can start buying parts. So far, the only investment into this project is a lot of time looking at parts and I bought some spark plugs so that rain and stuff doesn't get inside the cylinders.

The platform

So I traded a case of beer for this 1980 Honda CM400T. First step is to start the paper work for one day getting it registered. The plan is to work on this over the winter and hopefully have it running by next spring but I'm pretty busy (two kids) so I'm setting my expectations fairly low. If I'm done by the time I'm 40 (36 now), I'll be happy. Will try to keep this blog going as a build thread. Follow along if you're interested! This is my first bike and project of this nature. Very excited. Should be fun! The bike will be a whole lot of black when it's done.