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Old "newbie" here

2K views 15 replies 8 participants last post by  marshallf3 
It was a CB750 and it followed a CB360 twin I rode in med school. Since then I have raised seven children, practiced pediatrics for 30 years and had about a dozen motorcycles from various European and Asian countries. I spotted this little beauty on eBay a few weeks ago and thought "I've always wanted one of those little Honda transverse V-twins!". Well, now she's mine! Less than 2,700 miles on the odo. Things done to date:



-Front brake MC and caliper overhaul

-All fluids and filters

-Spark plugs, set valves and adjust cam chain tensioner

-Drain and refill cooling system

-Rear wheel spline lube

-Renew fuel line and filter

-Replace side stand with eBay find (original one bent trailering it home!)

-A few other small items, I forget



Wanted to post a few pics. How do I do that?


Not easy unless you're using Firefox or (shudder) MSIE. Personally I use Opera as my main browser. If you want images hosted just e-mail them to me and I'll stick them on my website so you'll have true images without all the spam.



Paul, along time you'll find a few other things that aren't going to show up until it gets warmer around here. A few that come to mind are the mech seal, the clutch rod seal and that stupid seal for the shifter shaft that is easier than changing a light bulb. Old Okie and I are looking forward to seeing you some where midpoint. He's out in Okarche and I'm in OKC so I think my Custom can make it to Stroud, they have very small tanks on them.



Yea, I'll never forget seeing my first one in the showroom when they first came out, something about that engine stuck buried in my mind even though I was riding Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha and a few other things (all mostly motocross or enduro) at the time. Most unusual at the time was a CB175 and a 50cc Harley that wasn't worth the trouble of even starting although it did every time. Most exciting bike I ever rode as a tiny Yamaha you could pick up by hand but had a 125cc engine. You couldn't really do much with it being a full sized adult but the girl that owned it was barely over 4' tall so she loved it as she couldn't hold up a true 250. I need to go look that old bike up some day, it was way overpowered for a bike that small.





I seriously thought about buying that CX but I could only think about my banker wanting to know why I needed yet another bike in my stable as he knew what I had and already financed a couple for me. After ages without I started looking again on craigslist and found a CX down in Newcastle. PO was a pain in the rear but it ran fine so I just forked over the cash, he threw in a helmet that was two sizes too large and I rode it home. Seriously butchered, straight pipes directly from the headers, wrong master cylinder, etc and the most terrible rattle can paint job you'd ever see. Rode it during 2009 but all that has been corrected during the past year aside from finishing the paint. Best Old Okie and I can tell is that the odometer was correct at 12K miles so it's just now getting broken in.



From my guess we haven't had our winter yet, tons of cold weather but I sense a good ice storm is going to finish it off.
 
Paul, get in on that group buy for the mech seals that Doward has posted - you'll need it.



Give the tach some time, it may free up on its own. Don't go shooting oil in there or it will get on the lens. At the most a single drop of 3-1 around the input shaft area but we can take it from there if it doesn't calm down.



Yes, the winter has yet to come but my chainsaw is in the trunk just waiting for it. You're on AEP, we're on OG&E and as badly as we've been hit the past several winters they've done a heck of a lot to the grid to prevent power outages. I live in an a neighborhood where everything is underground and the main transmission lines are less than 1/2 mile down the street over by the lake. Quail Creek but it doesn't prevent my friends in Nichols Hills from getting hit. Oak & Cypress trees are sturdy but so many planted those stupid (??) pear trees and others that fall down if you blow on them. The power company tries to keep them trimmed at their expense but it only takes one falling on a line and out come the candles. No big deal to me, I can play solitaire by myself after I get all my PCs shut down but my laptop will run itself for a good 4 hours and, unlike cable, I don't lose my DSL connection so long as my UPS takes care of the modem and routers. I usually just kick back and relax for a while and power is restored in short order.
 
That gasket is less than $5 and even the dealers can still get them. Personally I prefer common VM&P Naphtha to clean up old rubber, that or the old typewriter roller cleaner/rubber rejuvinator that still has some trichlor in it. We just put a new one on mine as the cost was minimal so why not?



My mech seal was really strange - sometimes it would leak, sometimes it wouldn't but I'll guarantee you that given a fairly warm Oklahoma day and a long stoplight will cause it to leak if its on the way out. I don't like having leaks so it was replaced with the Shep method thus I shouldn't have to worry about it again.



Same thing with that clutch rod seal, not much of a leak but it's so inexpensive and easy to replace why not just do it? The gear shift seal leaked pretty badly but I think it was something like $3.50 from TAS and probably the easiest part I've ever installed on a vehicle. Of course I was stupid and put the shifter back on upside down so shifting was a pain until I figured out what I had done.
 
Found all three from Bike Bandit for around $10 total so they are on their way. Just makes sense to renew them on a 30 year old bike. They wanted around $65 just for the mechanical seal! Thanks to Doward and the forum. My old mech seal looked intact but the spring seemed a bit week. Looks like the critical sealing surfaces are the flat face of the mech seal pressing against the ceramic ring on the back of the impeller. It will be interesting to compare it with the height of the new one.


Doward's seal is exact, I even took a digital micrometer to it to compare to the factory Honda seal I've got in reserve. The part of the seal that fails is the little rubber part in the cup, the rubber dries out and starts leaking when the pressure builds up. The sad thing is that some POs try to cure this problem but putting silicone seal into the weep hole then when it has no place to go it travels back into your oil instead of out the weep hole.



Only made sense to replace those gaskets, Kudo's to you! These aren't Harley's so we don't want go go around with oil and coolant leaks ruining our reputation when the parts are so inexpensive and easy to replace. Let me know just how hard it was to replace the shifter seal, took me all of 5 minutes then a couple of hours to figure out I had the shifter put back on wrong as it will go on either way. Take a pic or simply remember that the curve goes over, not under, and then get the splines set properly.



I used the old bolt but I'm tempted to start using Stainless steel socket head cap screws wherever I can if they don't stand out and are far more forgiving as far as if you ever need to remove them again. You've got an Ace hardware store right down the street from you so just take the old bolt in and match it up. Cadmium was preferred for most apps that touched aluminum but stainless is almost as totally inert to electrolysis from dissimilar metal contact.



I would also like you to hit up Grainger's and get a thing of this. It isn't cheap but but one little 8 oz bottle will last you forever and can be used anywhere including exhaust systems because it's good to 2,400°F: http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/LOCTITE-Anti-Seize-Compound-4KM51?Pid=search Comes with a brush top so you can easily apply a tiny amount as needed. You may have to drive to Tulsa for a local branch but it isn't hazardous so they'll ship it. I've used it on exhaust gaskets/bolts on cars and anything from the smaller to the largest bolts. I wouldn't even put a head gasket on without a tiny coating.
 
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