I honestly didn’t realize this thing was plastic. Even when I was removing the front fender and was in close contact with it I thought it was made of metal. Its in decent shape, someone on eBay will buy it.

I think it looks better without it. I’ll worry about polishing those forks later.

I also have a shiny new Honda OEM brake line waiting to be installed. Maybe I’ll get to it next week.

My seat didn’t arrive this weekend. That’s okay. I had wanted to install the seat and start figuring out what I was going to do with the battery. Since it didn’t arrive, I reinstalled the battery box in its original location. I wanted to make sure my fooling about with the new jets, filters, and wiring harness didn’t effect the bikes ability to to run. So, I decided to temporarily put it back on.

Here is the link to the post of the removal.
http://www.austincaferacer.com/2008/07/removing-the-battery-and-battery-box/#comment-17

The old thing was pretty distressed, but after some sanding with 320 grit sandpaper and a few coats of some rattle can enamel it was looking fairly decent.

Here is a shot of my clever use of the abundance of bamboo in the yard.

Before shot.

After shot.

The battery back in place. Lets test it out!

Honda 1976 CB550 from Austin CafeRacer on Vimeo.

Sounds good. Idles fine. I won’t know for sure if its fully functional until I get it on the road. Can’t wait for my seat.

Like an archaeologist digging through layers of sediment and finding signs of earlier civilizations, I’ve discovered several locations on my bike that have had previous work done. Example: The oil filter bolt.

I presume the bolt was stripped and the previous owner used a cutting disc or angle grinder to fashion some sort of primitive rectangular knob to be able to turn it and get it out. What I can’t understand is why the bolt was put back in. A new bolt can easily be purchased for around $10 bucks.

I used some vice grips to try turn the bolt… after a short battle, I was the victor. It came loose and I drained the thick, dirty, black oil.

• I wiped down the oil filter housing
• Installed a new oil filter
• New rubber gasket
• New shiny oil filter bolt
• Poured in a few quarts of fresh SAE 10W-40

I can’t pretend to fully understand the way carburetors work. I only know as much as I can interpret from what I read online and from that cryptic Clymer manual.

All my hunting through forums for a step by step instruction set for rejetting carbs was fruitless.

Here is my photo set that hopefully will help others feel less timid when it comes to opening these guys up. Granted, I didn’t fully disassemble them, I only replaced the main jets.

Removing the leaf spring is as easy as moving it to the right and sliding it out from the main jet.

Keeping everything together.

Since I was in here I thought I may as well check the slow jets to see if they were dirty or clogged.

They were fine. I blew some canned air through them and inspected them thoroughly.

Shiny new main jets. Installing them is as simple as pushing them in.

That’s it. I checked all the slow jets (all clean) and pushed in the new 115 main jets, and placed the leaf springs back on.

….but

When I was putting the float bowls back on I noticed that three screws on two carbs weren’t screwing in correctly. The screw holes on the two carbs were stripped.

I was a little sad.

If the screws had been stripped I could have easily replaced them, but it was the screw holes on the carbs that were stripped. Bummer.

Luckily, I live fairly close to an Ace Hardware. A quick trip, and ten minutes later, I came back home with some sweet looking allen bolts.

That solved my problem, except this method only worked on the outside carbs on the outside corners. I just lucked out that those were the holes that were stripped.

I have to say that I kinda enjoy running into these small little problems. It makes the whole experience that much more fun.

I didn’t think there would be a significant weight reduction but there is. The rear fender weights a heck of a lot.