1973 HONDA CB500K - RESTORATION UPDATE

1973 HONDA CB500K - RESTORATION UPDATE

This past Saturday, March 22nd I got some work done on the Green CB500 Four.  The Wednesday prior I had ordered a few parts from the Honda Dealership here in Huntington Beach.  They arrived on Friday so I was excited to get going on it once the weekend hit.  My main objective was to get the new clutch cable swapped out for the old one, but I ended up getting a lot more accomplished.  Below is a recap of what was accomplished:

As soon as I got the clutch cover taken off I knew I was going to have a good deal of cleaning to do.  It was a greasy mess.  I've never seen it cached on that thick before but I figure it's been over a decade since someone took it off to clean so it made sense.  I got the clutch cable removed and began scraping out all that thick black grease.  I also cleaned around the inside of the engine near the sprocket and chain.  That's where the majority of the mess was.  There was quite a lot of buildup on the frame and below on the exhaust pipes just below the area where they run under the engine.  I had some good cleaner to use that made it easy to remove but all the little grooves around the gear box had to be picked at with a screwdriver to get the packed in grease out.  

Then, I finally got to get started cleaning the cover itself.  This was pretty easy to clean out for the most part.  I hopefully won't have to do this again for a while.  Below is a "before & after" shot of the clutch cover.

Much better now...

At some point I plan on getting all the engine covers taken in to be polished but first I need to finish my other Cafe Racer project.  It'll give me some time to line up new bolts and gaskets.  I'm looking forward to having both CB500's looking fine.

 After all the parts were cleaned I attached the new clutch cable and re-installed the cover back onto the bike.  Then I just had to route the cable up to the lever on the handlebars so I could get it attached to the perch and adjust the settings.  In case you've never done this before, you will need to remove the gas tank to get the clutch cable off and the new one back on.

I put a new adjuster nut and washer on there as you can see because the old one was pretty rusty and looked bad.  It's such a small change but can make a huge difference.  Once the clutch adjustments were good to go and it was back in working order, I moved the ignition switch back down to it's original location there by the left front side of the engine.  You can see where my key chain is hanging in the picture below.  The previous owner had moved it up to the handlebar area and it just looked odd.  Now, its where it should be and my key chain won't rub on the gas tank anymore.

The last thing I accomplished was cleaning the triple clamp.  When I bought the bike the paint on the triple clamp was coming off and looking pretty raggedy.  My plan is to have this piece re-powdercoated black but as I mentioned above, I need to put most of my money into the cafe build first.  Then I can do what needs to be done with this.  All I did was take a steel brush to it after I removed it from the bike in order to prep it for that future work.  It looks better all blacked out but it will at least look good for now with a nice clean finish.

All in all, I'm proud of what I got done for the day!  Unfortunately, my back is incredibly soar because I did not have a lift to put this on and was bent down the whole day, but Fuck it!  It was worth it.