PROJECT LOG Page 4

May  07 2001

    Spent the week wet sanding the engine covers. After wet sanding, I then buffed with steel wool, then polished on my buffing wheel. All the covers came out pretty good, but you can still see some disoloration caused by the corrosion on the aluminum if you look close. It's amazing how deep the corrosion goes! I think it will still look pretty nice once it's all together, but not show quality. Still waiting on my gaskets so I can complete installation of the engine covers.

May  14 2001

    Things kind of moving slow this week. It's real hot in the garage now, so I'm having a little trouble getting motivated to go out there and work! I did manage to buff out a couple more engine pieces. My bottom end gaskets finally came in, so now I just need to clearcoat all the engine covers, then I can put them on. My pistons and cylinder were also done at the machine shop this week. They had to go to the 2nd over size on the bore as these were the only pistons that they could find. They did a nice job with the boring. The cylinders look a lot nicer than the rusted mess I gave them to work with! They bead blasted the whole cylinder, so the aluminum is all now a nice even color. It kind of a dark grey. I need to decide if I am just going to clearcoat it, or make it look more silver by painting with aluminum engine paint.

May  28 2001

    Last week was the first week since I started this project that I didn't work on the bike at least one day. Lots of family stuff, so no time for the bike. This week I clearcoated the cylinder and let it dry for a few days. I cleaned up and mounted the cylinder studs, mounted the pistons on the connecting rods and installed the rings. Next came the cam chain pulley and the plastic chain slider. I then placed the cylinder over the pistons. I was worried about how hard it would be to get the cylinder over both sets of rings, but it went pretty smooth. Just used a screwdriver to push on one side of each ring and worked the cylinder down until all the rings were inside. I am pretty happy with the color of the cylinder with just the clear engine paint. I need to make sure the shop beadblasts the cylinder head and com cover the same way so everthing will match.

June  04 2001

    Spent the week working on my wiring harness. I purchased a good used one a few months back. After tracing out the wiring in this harness against the wiring diagram in ther Clymer manual I found out that this harness actually came out of a K1 model SL. So I spent the next several days carefully comparing the wiring diagrams for the K0 model against the K1 model. The only differences are in the electric starter circuit. I had to strip the starter button wire out of what was left of the original K0 harness and place it in the K1 harness. I will also have to modify a few of the grounds but luckily there is a "spare" connector on the K1 which contains an extra ground lug. The neat thing about this is that even the wire colors are the same for the two different models of SL's.
    Once I got all the wires in the harness identified, I check them end to end with a continuity tester, then labeled each connector with a piece of tape. It will be pretty easy to match everything up once I get the harness on the bike. See the wiring diagram page if you are interested in looking at the wiring diagrams for the two types of SL's.

June  25 2001

     It's been really hot in the garage, which has slowed my progress somewhat. But after two weeks I really needed a garage fix so I spent all day Saturday in the garage. It was 115 in the shade , but I set up my big fan and soaked myself down about once an hour to keep cool. Worked pretty well, but by 4:00PM I has exhausted from doing battle with the heat!
    Made some good progress though. Got the head all cleaned up and ready to go to the shop. Although it looks like my donor
CB head may be in servicable shape, I want to have them take it apart and beadblast the housing, then redo the valve seats.
Hopefully a mild valve lapping will get them good as new. New valves will probably be expensive!
    I couldn't believe how tough it was to remove the old gasket from the top of the head. I ended up grinding it off with my little
scotchbrite gasket grinding tool. Worked great, but made a heck of a mess!
    I also prepped the cam case and cam cover for beadblasting. Once I get everything back from the shop I will clearcoat the
parts then I can complete the rest of the engine assembly and get it back in the frame.
    Now I just need to get motivated about starting the wiring!

July 02  2001

    Took the head, cam case, and cam case cover over to the shop for rebuilding and beadblasting this week. Decided to tackle the carbs as it's a job I can do indoors (at least as long as my wife isn't around). I disassembled and cleaned one carb. The good news was the diaphram in this carb appears to be in good shape. This is an expensive piece in a CV carb. The bad news was the float has gas in it. It will have to be replaced, it's impossible to set the level on a float with fluid in it. I was a little confused about why the float shape and other internals didn't quite match the parts manual drawings for the SL. I went ahead and reassembled the carb minus the float for now. When I took the other carb apart, I found that this carb matches the part book. Looks like my project bike came with two different models of carbs. With the help of the VJMC email list (thanks Ellis) I was able to determine that one carb is from a '69 or '70 CB350 and the other carb is an original SL350 carb. I don't want to try and sync two different styles of carb on the same engine so I'm in going to have to locate another matching set. The struggle continues. See the pictures page for a shot of a disassembled and clean CV carb.

July 09  2001

    Decided to hold off on carbs until I get a matching set to rebuild. Found a set in Minnesota. Should be here in a week or so (thanks Shawn). Since I'm stuck on both the engine and carbs right now, worked on bodywork details this week. I disassembled the speedometer and tachometer gauges and repainted the housings gloss black. While I had everything apart I verified that the lamps and indicator lights in both gauges were good.
    Also cleaned up up the "HONDA" badges for the gas tank and installed them. Disassembled and cleaned up the gas cap latch and cap latch, and shined everything up on the buffing wheel, then installed the cap and latch on the tank. I think I need to look for a new cap seal as the one that is there is hard as a rock. I would hate for gas to leak all over my new paint the first time I fill the tank up! I also installed the highbeam indicator into the headlight shell. The bulb for this is burn't out so I will have to get a new one before putting in the headlight.

July 16  2001

    Heard from the shop that is rebuilding my head this week, they said all the intake valves on both heads I gave them to work with were shot. They had to locate 2 new intake valves. I guess the exhaust valves are salvageable. Then I made the mistake of asking if they had an estimate for the head rebuild and bead blast work was going to run....$180....ouch. They did a good job on the cylinder and pistons so I guess it's worth it. Looks like I am going to end up spending about $400 in maching/new parts for the engine.
    Also received some cables and such from Ellis. Installed the front brake cable on the bike and adjusted till I had what seemed like good braking. The lever seems really mushy and I am pretty much out of travel on all the cable and linkages. Ellis was right, the cable with the built in brake light switch does have a "spongy" feel to it. Hopefully I will remember this the first time I go for a ride!!
    Received the '71 carbs from Shawn. They look pretty decent, I'll start working on them next week.

July 23  2001

    Dissasembled and cleaned one of the carbs this week. It's interesting that I have 3 different syles of CV carbs and all have different size jets in them. I'm not exactly sure what size jets to start with. For now I'm just reinstalling the jets that came in the carbs. I have one carb cleaned and reassembled. Just need to make sure the float height is correct and locate some very small o-rings for the primary and secondary main jets. These don't come in the rebuild kits for some reason. I think I can get them from Honda, but I will try the local hardware store first.

July 30  2001

    Cleaned and rebuilt carb #2. No big suprises, just need the little o-rings for this one also. Picked up my rebuilt head and beadblasted top end covers from the shop this week. Everything looks great! I cleaned everything up with soap and water then clear coated all parts with clear engine paint. Here's a picture of the top end parts ready to go on the engine. I will need to reassemble the cam box, but will do this once it's on the engine. Hope I can get the valves timed without too much trouble!!