It’s been literally years since I last wrote anything new on this blog. Not that this seems to have deterred visitors though according to the stats, or people leaving comments both real and spam!
But it’s about time I pull a finger out and write something new.
I’ll start with an apology – sorry for leaving things halfway through, when I started the blog as well as my intended project of repainting and restoring my old ’96 Honda CB500 I had grand ambitions. Well perhaps not grand, but I had a goal and I wanted to document it. Life and luck (lack there0f) got in the way I suppose. The bike became so unreliable that it wasn’t worth the headache. We got rid of it and since then didn’t have another suitable to start any project on! Add to this a house move and plenty of DIY to be done there, and there wasn’t any time for writing or thinking about bike stuff anyway.
BUT: Things have changed. For the past few months I’ve been the proud owner of another Honda. A working project 
My "new" old '78 Honda CB550
Project because it didn’t work very well when I bought it for (what I think was a reasonable) £650. Working because well, the seller lived 100 miles away and it did get me home that day.
There is a long list of things that were wrong, most of which we discovered after getting it home, some of which resolved, some not.
- Sticky front brake. Perhaps an understatement, seized would be a better term.
- Also, upon pressing, the front brake didn’t really brake at all.
- Bike seemed to get quite hot, but I didn’t really have anything to compare it to.
- Oil light came on after heating up, but only at lower rpm (sticky oil pressure switch?)
- Rubbish pick up and not quite as quick as it should have been – it also refused to rev over 4500-5000 rpm
- Rusty front mudguard
- Ugly tank – flap covering filler cap wouldn’t open with just the key, but rather it needed to be pried open with a screwdriver. Obviously since this had been done by the previous owner for a while, this was one of the causes for the tank being ugly
- Extremely hard clutch
- Bent rear brake lever
- Oil leak from gear change lever
- Surface rust on downpipes and exhaust
I’m sure there was more but this is all I could remember right now.
On the bright side the seat was in pretty nice condition and the previous owner also gave me a repair manual with the bike (possibly because he felt sorry for me and knew I’d need it).
In the following blog posts I’ll go through some of the changes and repairs that were made as well as share resources I used to help me.
