Phour days to phantastic - a Honda CX500 tale (day 2)

Now let's start out with the fact that it's no longer about doing it in four days and also not (quite) in four consecutive ones. Let's more aptly call it "phour installments to phantastic".

Regardless of what you see below, I would like to point out, that the bike ran last time, before we, being my dad and me, pulled the carbs out. Tough little bugger.

Out comes the ultrasonic cleaner and trust me it took waaaay more than one attempt and fresh cleaning solution to get to clean up. 

Now I have pointed out, that this CX was rather well-priced. Not much of a surprise as we had to go through all the de-mobbing paperwork of an ex-police bike, which strictly speaking shouldn't be registerable anymore and on top of that it must have had at least one incident of rather unconventional parking, i.e. a crash. As such we used the time rather well in trying to re-align the engine and frame after loosening the bolts last time to swap the front engine cover. Luckily there are no pictures of two adult men wrestling with 2m tubes trying to force the engine back into position...

In the end the carb came out a lot cleaner than before. Which didn't help much, because the following jet disintegrated and took the left carb body with it. 

So second go with two new jets (one as a spare) and a N.O.S. left carb body. 

The following picture is meant to help all of those, who are trying to piece together a set of these Keihins. There's umpteenth springs in this picture.

Because technically it was a new day, I had also bought all new stainless hardware, I mean no reason NOT to dress up a turd, right? 

Some people say you have to put a bit of yourself into a project, when you want a good result. The red stuff is blood. Carbs are in, new engine manifolds and all looks pretty decent to be honest.

Well, pretty might be a bit much to ask for, but that's the bike completed and ready to fire up.

... despite it being less than zero degrees in the workshop, after a few moments the poor man's Guzzi came to life again. A few tweaks on the idle screw and she idled with a bit of help from the choke at around 1700-1800rpm. It's hard to tell as it was so cold that the tach was more or less stuck and wouldn't really respond to changing revs.

Aftermath: After a bit of checking, there were no leaks or unusual sounds and the bike seems to run ok(-ish), which is totally fine as the carbs aren't sync'ed or the mix screws set up to anything close to what the book says. All the electrics seem to work (except for the temp gauge) and it charges just fine. Next step will be to get her fully road worthy and registered. And at this point I hope my dad will put her to good use and then the last installment will be a slightly less hideous tail-piece and seat.

All of this will have to wait though, because right after we took the last picture snow began to fall and that basically renders any road testing impossible.