PROJECT LOG Page 3

March  04 2001

    Still doing body work. Put an initial coat of sandable laquer primer on the fenders and was very dissapointed to see lumps and pits where my body work (bondo) had been done! Seems like you need to wetsand until you can't stand it anymore, then sand some more! By the end of the week after a couple more thin coats of bondo and a very thin coat of glazing putty, I was satisfied with the surface on the fenders. The tank is still taking many coats of bondo to get the countours right. looks like I will be at this for some time yet.

March  12 2001

    I'm on vacation this week with not a whole lot to do, so I spent considerable time on the body work. I wet sanded the primered fenders with 800 grit, then applied another coat of primer and wet sanded this with 1500 grit. This gives a very smooth surface for the finish coat of paint.
    Went to the autobody paint shop and picked out a nice metallic blue color which is fairly close to the original Honda Blue. It's actually Tempo (plastikote) Auto Body touch-up spray paint color code GM2434. It took three cans of color and one large can of the corresponding clear laquer to paint the headlight shell, and front and rear fenders. Here's the process I used:
3 coats of color with 5 minutes inbetween coats, then let the part sit for 1 hour, then a light "fog" coat of clear laquer followed by three heavy coats all with 5 minutes inbetween. Took all day to paint the three parts but I am very happy with the results! I really like the color and hopefully after curing for about 3 weeks they will rub out to a deep shine. The shine is already nice but I think I can get it even better with a little more elbow grease.
    Now is probably a good time to talk about where my painting technique came from. I found a really detailed rattle can painting technique on the GS Resources website. I have followed this as closely as possible up to this point with great results. Check out their site. I printed out the painting instuctions and but it in my "rebulding" instructions binder.
    I'm still in the bondo and wetsanding phase on the gas tank, but one or two more cycles of this should get the tank where I want it, then I can put on an initial coat of primer and see how my 3 weeks of work looks!

March  19 2001

    Well now that the fenders and headlamp shell are curing on the family room floor (they just look to good to leave in the garage) I was able to tackle the gas tank. I finally got the gas tank smoothed out and the initial primer coat on. Looks like I did a little better job with the bondo on this piece as no additional filling or glazing was required. I wet sanded the tank with 800 grit paper. It's now ready for the final primer coat and wet sanding.
    Since the body work is winding down I decided to go back where I started six months ago, the engine. Using the special Honda tool to remove the oil filter basket, I was able to strip the rest of the lower end down to the bare cases with just common hand tools. the bottom end doesn't seem to be in too bad of shape. Looks like I need to replace one of the kickstart gears, then install a cam chain on the crank and put it back together. I think I will try to locate new oil seals as well so I dont end up with oil leaks around all the feedthrough points on the cases.
    After spending an entire Saturday degreasing and cleaning up the cases, I decided that they look just too beat up to go back on the bike so I will strip the clearcoat on the aluminum cases, repolish and reclearcoat. Back to the scrubbing and polishing! Seems like restoring an old bike is 90% elbow grease (and quite a bit of money).

March  26 2001

    Not a whole lot of activity this week. Got the final coat of primer on the gas tank, and got the upper case half polished. Need to clean up the gasket surfaces then clear coat the top half.

April  02 2001

    Completed the finish coat and clear coat on the gas tank. It came out pretty good. See the pictures on my pictures page. That completes the painting of the body work. I will wet sand the clear coat, then rub out with rubbing compound per the instructions on the GS Resources website. The fenders and headlight shell will be ready for this in about a week. Picked up a really neat gasket surface cleaner at the paint supply store. It is put out by scotchbrite. It's a little 2" mandrel that holds 2" scotchbrite discs kind of like velcro. It worked really good to dress up the sealing surfaces on the engine cases and is much quicker than scraping with a razor blade. I also polished up the lower case half and sprayed clear engine enamel on both cases. The cases now are fairly shiny and very clean. First order of business for engine reassembly is to locate new oil seals for the cases. Next I need to start tearing down my spare motor and take inventory of what parts I can salvage from this engine to build one complete motor. Hopefully I won't have to hunt down too many extra parts.

April  09 2001

    My parts from Mike in Canada arrived this week. I picked up a good seat, rusty but repairable mufflers, and a set of handlebars with all controls. I also got a full set of bodywork and a decent gastank. All for a good price. The handlebars were quite rusty so I disassembled the switch housings, pulled the wires through the handlebars, and completely tore down the switches and cleaned them up with WD40. I then reassembled the switches and snaked the wires through my slightly bent but shiny original bars. I then checked out switches and wiring with a continuity tester to make sure the switch gear functions correctly. I also mounted my NOS levers and old grips on the bars, then put the bars back on the bike.
    I finished out the week by tearing down my spare motor. The "autopsy" of this motor showed that one of the spark plugs had been left out and water got into the cylinder. That cylinder was completly rusted! This was why I couldn't get the engine to turn over. The valves on this side of the head are also really rusty. The good news is that the cam chain and cam chain tensioner parts were all in excellent shape. The kickstart gears also appear to be much fresher than the worn gears in my SL motor. I began reassembling the lower crankcase by installing the kick start mechanism from the donor engine into my SL case. I posted some pictures of the opened bottom end from the CB engine and the kickstarter installed in the SL crankcase.

April  16 2001

    Continued assembly of the bottom end of the engine this week. I completely disassembled and cleaned the shift drum, mainshaft and countershaft (transmission). I was really worried about my ability to take these pieces apart and get them back together again but everything came out fine in the end. I took my time, studied my parts manual and service manuals really close, then worked on one assembly at a time. I would lay the pieces out in the order that they went together, then clean one or two pieces at a time in mineral spirits. Once everything was clean and dry, I would coat the parts with clean motor oil, then assemble per the parts diagrams. My pictures page shows how I laid out the parts to keep track of how things went back together. Another thing that was very helpful was keeping the transmission intact in my donor engine. I was able to study how the transmission was assembled and by rotating the shift drum, I could run the transmission through the gears and watch the shift forks slide the gears around. Once my SL transmission was back together I was able to verify that it worked like the donor transmission so this helped my confidence level quite a bit. The crankshaft just needed a good cleaning, then I slipped the cam chain on and installed this in the case. Since the SL motor had died when the cam chain broke, it had really gouged up the bearing retainer, so I used the one from the donor engine. Buying the extra engine has turned out to be a big plus! I have a full set of spare parts that I can use if I need them. I compare the parts from each engine and use the best parts for reassembly.
    I finished out the week by putting the case halves together. This ended up taking about an hour to get the case halves to seat together properly. I couldn't get them to come together without a 1/4" gap on either end. At first I thought it was the locating dowels, so I took them out but still couldn't get the cases to come together. I finally figured out that the kickstart gear was not meshing with first gear in the transmission. I had the transmission in neutral and I was turning the mainshaft think the gears should mesh. Well, first gear is on the coutershaft and turning the mainshaft doesn't turn the countershaft when it's in neutral (guess I didn't study the transmission good enough). Once I turned the countershaft the gears meshed up and the cases dropped together on the transmission side. The front of the engine wouldn't come together because I had the bearing retainer in backwards for the crankshaft. I reinstalled the bearing retainer the other way and the cases came together nicely.
    I cleaned the sealing surfaces with laquer thinner, then applied a very thin coat of Hondabond and bolted things up. Some of the bolts were really beat up, but my donor engine came to the rescue again so I now have a brand new bottom end ready to go!

April  23 2001

    Installed the oil seals this week and then spent the majority of the week trying to get the shift linkage to function correctly. This is the whole gizmo that sits behind the clutch basket. Finally after 3 nights of putting it together and taking it apart I finally decided to study the shift drum and linkage on my donor engine. The original SL linkage had several problems, one of the forked ends on the shift arm stopper was bent. I guess it was bent so smoothly that I thought it was supposed to be this way. It was bent for a long time and was ridden this way because it rounded off the lip on the sleeve that it rides on. This is why when I would try to shift the transmission the linkage would either bind or pop off the shift drum. Further study of the donor parts showed that one of the pins in the end of the shift drum is supposed to stick out and hold the "star" in position. This had been sheared off on the SL part. Once I put all good parts from the donor motor on the shifter worked great!
    After the shifting fiasco I decided to closely compare the clutch assemblies and oil pump between the two engines. Although nothing looks bent or broken on the SL clutch and oil pump parts, the donor engine parts show less scoring and the clutch basket doesn't have dings in the basket fingers, so I cleaned up the donor motor clutch and oil pump to go in the SL motor. Realized I didn't have gaskets for the bottom end, and need one for the oil pump, so I placed an order for all the bottom end gaskets I need.
    While waiting on gaskets, I decided to wet sand and buff out the painted fenders and headlight shell. Once again I turned to the info on the GS Resources web site and wet sanded the clear coat with 2000 grit sandpaper. After doing this the parts sure look terrible! I didn't worry long because the application of the 3M fine cut rubbing compound brought out a deep shine! The wet sanding really levels out the clear coat, and then the rubbing compound and final waxing gives a finish that I think is hard to tell from a good paint shop job! Next weekend I will wetsand and rubout the gas tank then the bodywork is officially done.

April  30 2001

    Wet sanded and rubbed out the paint on the gas tank. The paint came out great, but I'm not so impressed with my bondo work. I can see every spot I filled now that the tank is shiny. I guess I will live with it for now, but I see another tank getting done next winter to replace this one. My family thinks it looks great and thinks I'm too picky. Maybe it's just because I know where every little imperfection is on that tank after spending so many hours on it! Still waiting on bottom end gaskets to mount the oil pump, so I decided to start in on the side covers for the engine. Took two nights of simple green and hotwater to clean all the muck off the countershaft cover, and the other covers weren't much easier to get clean. The counter shaft cover from the SL engine has some pieces missing (the bike must have threw the chain at some point) so I'm using the cover off the donor engine. The cover over the stator (the small one that says "honda" on it also was bent so bad that it got cracked, so the donor engine one of these will get used as well. I need to strip the paint/clearcoat off these parts, then do LOTS of wetsanding to try and make them look decent. I think I will polish them on my buffing wheel. This will make them shinier than they were stock, but I really like the look of polished aluminum!