Carb work cont...

I finally got some time to tinker with the bike... I pulled the carbs soaked them in chem dip, adjusted the floats to be as close as possible. Then and put them back together and back on the bike. It was in the disassembly stage that I realized what had been causing my problem I had left out the left side, carb to spacer, o-ring I decided that the rest couldn't hurt so continued the cleaning and adjustment. Once I got everything back together and went through the tuning recipe everything worked perfectly. Thanks to Ed and the guys at the Honda 305 forum for all of the help.

So... After many months of searching for the right place, my motorcycle and I have found our new home in Nashville. A nice single story house in Sylvan Park with a detached shop. This will be the new home for the Super Hawk and hopefully many siblings to come. Much needed to be done to the space to make it functional first of which was having a slab poured. Luckily our new home is owned by a rather gracious landlord Ron Runyon. Ron was inspired by my first restoration and looked for to see what would come next. After his generosity I hope I don't disappoint. Here are some progress pics.

Next on the list was to hang some shop lights. These were generously donated by my friend and co-worker Charles Price. The addition of the new (to me) 8' shop lights really illuminated the small space making working on projects at night and this coming winter a much more enticing prospect.

Next will be to Build a mobile workbench, build or find a Motorcycle lift or platform, and acquire the many tools that I'll need along the way.

Now back the the bike. Living 2yrs in White Bluff was not good for her in anyway. No Shop space meant she lived outside year round and this has provided me with a long list of to-do's. The biggest and most important will be the carbs are in pretty bad shape from the tank sealant failure and my attempts to clean them out have proved ineffective. Those will be amongst the first to have sent off. I've found that there is no substitute for experience and for that experience I'll be looking to Ed Moore in Kerrville, TX. Ed has been riding building and repairing Honda 305's since 1964 when they rolled off of the assembly lines. It was he who restored them the first time and I'll gladly trust him with them again. Other items to be done will be listed below in no particular order.

General cleaning top to bottom with close-up inspection of all parts
Lock-tight on all loose hardware

Change the Oil

Lube the cylinder walls with Marvel's Mystery Oil

Install Electric Starter

Replace stripped kick starter gear

Remove gas Tank and repaint

Remove Wheels and re-polish hubs

Replace rear break cable

Re-hang left muffler

Some pics of the bike in her new Home.

Gumption

Working on the bike today after many promises to her and myself to get down there and get something accomplished. I found that fuel tank sealer doesn’t mix well with e10 gas (Gas and ethanol blend). Which is what most of the pumps in Nashville have. The result was my tank liner being reduced to a powder and clogging up my entire fuel system. So my project today was to clean the carbs, rebuild the petcock, replace all fuel lines, and try to get it running. I accomplished most of this. I cleaned and replaced everything. Put it all back together, and my right carb bowl wouldn’t stop leaking. This turned out to be the gasket being out of place, but once I stopped that leak another started out of the vent for the bowl. I realized there was a larger problem at work. I removed the bowl and found that the float wasn’t cutting off the flow in time and that was causing the excess fuel. I adjusted(bent) the tap that contacted the needle and voila! It worked. I started the bike it ran for a bit but one of the slides was sticking causing it to rev unevenly and it would idle for a min or two and then die. I went through this seqence a few times and then reached my stopping point when the kick-start jumped a tooth and now needed to be dissasembled before I could start the bike again. That’s where I ran out of gumption… I guess it’s time to do something else having accomplished most of what I set out to do, but I couldn’t help feeling defeated as I climbed the stairs stinking of gasoline. The experience reminded me of a section of Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

http://mysteriousflame.com/gumption-traps/ Has an excellent write up on Gumption Traps and others of the sort...

myspace album

I realized I have all of my build pics on myspace which can be found here View Phaedrus's Album: "Superhawk"

Some progress shots of the build

The Honda Super Hawk

My first restoration was a 1964 Honda Superhawk (CB77). When I found her she was in rough shape. I'll post a few pics of her restoration as I go...