Honda CX 500 first Café build

Thanks lads, post some pix soon.

My cables all look like they are in good shape but I thought it wise to oil them up as one of the throtle cables was a little slow to move.



I dont have a cable oiler so I used a sandwich bag and a lakky band



I poked the cable through the bag and used the band to secure it in place.





This is about a simple a cable oiler you can get, and it works

Put about 25ml of oil in the bag and secure it with a loose knot



pump the other end of the cable a few times and wait 10 minutes while it works its way through



Now and then give it a couple of pumps



When you have a few drips coming out the end its done.

Nice little cheat with the bag and band!!

Good method,works well with cables in situ too.

These are my old pegs, not very cafe racer and very worn.



I only need the back plate off the top type as they atr the front pegs. I took the old pegs from my blade and welded the steel part to the back plate.



They look ok, and once the steel parts are painted I think they'll look even better.



I would have liked to have gone with rearsets but the way the gear shifter is set it would be a bit of a head ache.

IED wrote:

I would have liked to have gone with rearsets but the way the gear shifter is set it would be a bit of a head ache.

But not impossible.
You might find this interesting.

http://cx500forum.com/index.php?/topic/2420-rearsets/

They look awesome mate, there are some really clever people out there

I need to start thinking about my electrics and where they are going to be mounted.

The CDI unit is easy, that can go where it was mounted



the battery is sorted too



This is the unit that holds the regulator and starter solonoid, and it has to go.



I have some flat bar laying around and I'm going to make my own mount



Its simple enough to make a few bends in it and make my new mount



I'm going to weld some 10mm nuts on the back and the mount for the starter solonoide on the underside



I'll post the photos of the finished mount tomorrow.

So today I started back on the mounting fixture I did last night.

First job was to tack weld on a couple of captive nuts to hold the fegulator rec in place.





Then run a pool weld into the open spot welds I drilled out to remove the starter solonoide rubber mounting bracket from the old mount



They will grind flat.

Next I held it in place on the frame with my mole grips while I tacked in the other end. Once that was done I tacked in the battery box end.



Then a quick ckeck to see if everything was good



And there were no issues.



With everything tucked away under the seat the frame is going to look really clean and minimal



I just need to go through the wireing diagramme to check I'm not missing anything, then on monday we are going to the powdercoater.

Yes, youre coming too so keep watching.

SLOW DOWN!

You're making me look bad.

Lol, try and keep up matey

Only problem with shifting stuff around is the wires are to short, or to long.

My starter solonoid was right beside the battery on the original bike and now the live from the battery is to short.



I nipped into town and grabbed a few bits to tidy up things a bit, while I was there I saw this really cool old Nimbis combination



The tappets are on show and you can see the valve springs



Now that is something I would like to play with [:p]

Anyway I grabbed a new live lead and soldered new ends on it once it was cut to length





Its really chunky wire and my electric soldering iron just isnt up to the job so I dug out some of my plumbing solder and flux



Now on the drawing, off the battery I have a solid red and a red/yellow plus the main live, while this is right on my bike the red and a red/yellow plus the main live are on the solonoid side, its the same thing really.



I made my new set up same as the old one, but I changed the 20amp glass fuse for a blade type. and as the red/yellow goes straight to the regulator rec I cut it shorter and will run it straight to it.



I need an earth for the battery, so I drilled and tapped out the frame for a flat head hex bolt.



Spot welded it to hold it in place



then on the other side put a penny washer and a couple of nuts. after the powdercoat is done I'll cut round the washer to leave a good ground for the earth.



I'm going to run the starter wire from the solonoid to the starter motor through the frame so I drilled and filed a couple of holes



On the face of it there doesnt look like much to cover my time today, but the liitle things are usually what eat up time.

When I striped the bike down I labeled up the loom. Tonight I thought I would see if I could make some sense of it.



I draped the loom over the bike withe the marker for rear lights at the rear of the frame then cross referenced the loom with the drawing



Working my way forward I untaped the loom looking for any dodgy wires and connections and repairing them as I went.



The rear of the loom is looking good and all taped back up again.

I taped half way to the front of the bike, then stopped and taped from the front to back and covered the joint with red tape. If there is a problem at a later date I can remove the red tape and unwrap forwards or to the rear of the bike.



Its not looking to bad at the moment and I think I should be able to make it all work. One step at a time and I'll work my way right through the job, no worries.



Tomorrow is another day []

OMG! Do the people at Haynes know you're starting a rival publication on line?

I'm 'feared to death to look at my wiring loom, apart from the fact it's 35 years old it's been extended and modded to fek, so it's start from scratch time methinks

Lol, if Haynes did a cafe racer how to for a CX500, it would save me a lot of baldy head scratchin mate

Yes, but it wouldn't be as individual or as interesting as watching your build, plus being Haynes virtually everything you've done would have 4 'spanners' and be recommended to leave it to the 'professionals', I bow down in the presence of greatness!

IED wrote:

So I've decided to fit an electric fan to my CX500 for the following reasons

The advantages are some increase in performance.
Better cooling cycle.
Little or no chance of the Mechanical fan grenading the Radiator.
Faster engine warm up.
Parts are easy to source and replace.
------

Thanks for a very inspiring build thread. One thing re. the radiator: Now that you no longer depend on the old fan drive, will you place the radiator in a different position? I think it wold look good if it could be placed higher as it would allow you to see more of the beautiful motor.

/Alex

alexoest wrote:

IED wrote:

So I've decided to fit an electric fan to my CX500 for the following reasons

The advantages are some increase in performance.
Better cooling cycle.
Little or no chance of the Mechanical fan grenading the Radiator.
Faster engine warm up.
Parts are easy to source and replace.
------

Thanks for a very inspiring build thread. One thing re. the radiator: Now that you no longer depend on the old fan drive, will you place the radiator in a different position? I think it wold look good if it could be placed higher as it would allow you to see more of the beautiful motor.

/Alex

Good call Alex, its worth thinking about mate.



Right then,

Heres a question; I want to keep the area under the seat, behind the engine as clear as possible so I want to run the thick black lead from my starter solonoide (under the seat) to my starter motor through my frame. The longest lead I can find in my local auto spares shop is 60cm long but I need a bit 70cm long.

The guy in the shop says to buy a set of jump leads and just cut the black lead to the length required as its the same stuff.

Is that true?

Or is the guy just trying the hard sell?

You probably don't need me to tell you this but the longer you go, the thicker you need to go. You'll want a quality cable then. This isn't something you normally find in cheap jump leads (you don't want to be cutting up expensive leads).

You can buy 1m lengths all over the internet, including ebay. However, you could pop down to a scrap yard and get a lead from a car.

Thanks for the advice mate, I found a place on the net as you said and its £3.75 a meter, so thats the way I'm going to go.



In other news today;



Inside the rear engin case there is an oil seal between the water pump and the internal oily bits. I noticed when I removed the generator that the oil seal has perrished and got scale build up



Lookin a bit grim



I levered it out and it fell apart in my hand



There was quite a bit of it left in the seat as well



I gave it a clean out and checked around the outside of the case. It looks like because the seal had failed it was leaking water into the oil, and thats why it was a bit gloopy when I drained it. The other thing I noticed was there was obviously some cooland coming out of the drain hole because the seal had failed, and the previous owner thought the best cure was to plug the hole with a screw.



I removed the screw and the drain hole was jammed with dirt.

I was able to get a small drill bit in there with a pair of point nose pliers and get most of the dirt out



Then I went in from the other side with a sharp pick



I managed to clear it through and blast a bit of air through it with my compressor



Now I just need to order an oil seal from David Silver Honda and it should work as it was supposed to when it rolled of the production line. If you own a CX500 - 650 or custom and you have coolant weeping out the drain hole there is a good chance the oil seal has gone, so dont just plug up the hole, change the seal.



N.B. I was thinking about this small fault last night and when buying a CX it has to be one of the things to look for when you are looking over the bike. It could be a cotly repair as the engine will need to come out as if the small drain hole has been blocked then the oil seal has gone.

Or, if you are happy to do the work yourself, then it has to be a good bargaining chip to get the price right down.

if I remember rightly CX's were prone to O ring leak on the coolant tube that goes round the left of the engine

I'll be using O rings and silicone on all the coolant joints mate.

A while back I ground in my valves and changed 4 valve adjuster screws, I didnt check the valve clearences at the time, but I'm scratching round for things to do so I'm gonna do them now.

First off I cant do it totally as the Haynes manuel describes because I have the rear engine cover off and cant line up the marks on the fly wheel with the engine case.

So, heres how I went about it.

I need the piston on the right to be at top dead center "TDC" all the valves are in the closed position.

To do this I removed both spark plugs, then rotated the fly wheel to a point where the exhaust valves opened then closed. This is the end of the cycle. The piston should be at the top of the cylinder, and to confirm this I placed a screw driver in the spark plug hole



I removed the screwdriver then rotated the flywheel anti-clockwise.
The inlet valves then opened and closed. You can see from the photo the push rod at the top is up, pushing the rocker and valve down, and the valve is open. If the engine was running it would be sucking in fule from the carbs



As it does this the piston is on its way down and the valves shut, as indicated with the screwdriver



Then it comes back up it compresses the fuel mixture and when the piston reaches the top of the cylinder (T.D.C.) the spark plug will spark and ignite the fuel mixture forcing the piston down. but T.D.C is where we want it to be. At this point all the valves should be shut. Rock the flywheel gently back and forth and you will see minute movements up and down of the screwdriver. When you can judge it to be half way between up and down and for a very brief moment the screw driver does'nt move you will be at T.D.C.



I checked for signs of movement in the rockers, but there was none.



Now we can loosen off the locking nuts on the inlet valve adjusting screws and set the gap to 0.010mm. If you are going to have a go at this check you biks manuel for gap sizes.



Once you tighten up your locking nuts, re check the gap. It should bu a snug fit not to tight with just a small amount of friction when you move the feeler guage.

Do both inlet as they are on the same rocker, then do the exhaust without moving the engine flywheel. My exhaust gap is 0.012mm so I had to use two feelers. This brings me to an important point, some of the feelers are thinner than paper so be very carefull you dont have extra feelers stuck together you dont know about, that will give you the wrong gap. Its worth checking.



So once you have done the exhaust valves, follow the methods above to do the left side



Once you've done that side give your self a pat on the back, because it wasnt as hard as you thought it would be

Excellent how to as usual one thing whilst putting screwdriver into spark plug hole make sure it is long enough so that it doesn't fall in and get jammed. Also make sure screwdriver doesn't jam at an angle and damage plug threads and piston crown.

Doh!! I knew I forgot somthing, lol cheers buddy.