You might recall a few weeks ago I ditched the original headlight brackets for some shiny aftermarket ones. The process revealed some fairly pitted and rusted upper forks that were hiding beneath those original brackets. No amount of sanding and polishing would make them look good, but buying new ones was out of the question. I looked around and forks are just too expensive. I emailed Forks by Frank, who come highly recommended by the SOHC4 veterans but they wanted over $250 bucks for a pair of CB550 35mm forks. So I tried my luck on eBay but everything on there was just as snotty as my forks. Until….

I found a pair that were in gorgeous shape. Complete forks for $35 bucks not including shipping. The chrome is perfect. They just need to be wiped down and cleaned. They even still had a label on them that reads: 1976, 1977, 1978 Honda CB550 Forks. This will be a project that I’ll work on in the next few months, but not anytime soon. I’m going to polish the lowers and sell them, take the dust covers and forks for my bike and then sell my crusty forks.

My CB550′s breaker points need to be adjusted before summer riding. I started this morning but didn’t get to finish due to lunch and a light drizzle outside. What I did discover was a small typo in the Clymer Repair Manual. The point gap is indicated as .016 inches which translates to .4mm, but evidently this basic math has eluded Clymer’s copy editors. Hopefully their 21st edition will reflect an accurate metric conversion. I tried to find a contact email address for the publishers to let them know, but my google-fu skills must be lacking this morning. I can’t seem to find one.

More on this tomorrow.

The cold and the rain are behind us now and it’s time to run some basic maintenance on CB to prepare it for summer riding. I started this morning with a simple vale adjustment.

Popped the tappet covers off.

I slid the feeler gauge between all the valves to measure the gap and they were all fine. If they were off it was by a hundredth of a millimeter. No fun.

I decided to adjust them anyway for good measure and because it was such a nice morning to be outside wrenching on the ol’ bike.

Intake valves (rear) are .05mm gaps. Exhaust valves (front) are .08mm gaps.

All done.

Most people don’t care for it, but I love eBay. I have been selling everything I’ve been pulling off the Honda CB550. Even the items I didn’t think anyone would want.

I’ve also been keeping track of my sales and purchases. In fact I have a pretty geeky spreadsheet that covers all my expenses and profits from this caferacer project.

This table illustrates only the items that I stripped from the bike.

Not bad for 30 year old parts. I netted nearly $300 dollars. That profit helped pay for my brand spanking new exhaust.

I haven’t come out ahead, nor have I broken even, but the profits from my eBay auctions have cut my costs on this project significantly.