'72 CB350 - Some Assembly Required

[V1GiLaNtE]

Oh man. This is cool! I plan to ride Skyline this weekend (Saturday), but if you need somebody to come over and stupidvise on Sunday I'm happy to join.

[.RJ]

Yeah Sunday might be nice to have someone drink beer and heckle me while I try to get this thing assembled.

My new handlebars arrive today, so if I buckle down on Sunday I can have the bars, controls, wiring and carbs on the bike. Maybe the electronic ignition, too.

[.RJ]

Progress!

I got my lower than stock but not clip-on handlebars mounted, along with a new set of electrical controls and all the cables run.  There's a bunch of them... front brake, speedo, tach, clutch.  Takes a while to get everything routed and adjusted.  I'm not terribly happy with the clutch cable, I had ordered everything from Motion Pro but may pick up an OEM one to use instead.

I grabbed a different tank off of ebay, in better shape both inside and out than the ones that I already have and a set of side covers that match.  No photos of those... yet.  

The bike came with a new set of carb boots, which was a nice surprise to find, but not the gaskets to mount them to the cylinder head.  Those are on order, along with a seal for the tach cable at the cylinder head and a new fuel cap.  I'm off work this week, going to push to get all of the electric shit done - need to sort out the wiring harness and get the electronic ignition set up.  This is going to be the biggest hurdle/headache of getting this thing running.  At some point I need to run down to Coleman and get an oil filter, oil and a battery.

[.RJ]

Tossed on my 'new' tank and side covers.  This is the one I'm going to roll with, the green one was a bit beat up cosmetically.  This one will clean up nice with a polish on the outside and just needs a little clean up inside.

I would love to find a set of matching fork covers & headlight mounts, they were paint matched to the tank & side covers from the factory - but no dice yet on ebay. Worst case I can paint the ones that I have to match with a spray can.

[.RJ]

More progress.... getting into the wiring.  Got all the broken connectors and shorted wires repaired, and I'm in to the headache of adapting the aftermarket handlebar controls into the stock wiring harness.  In theory it all controls the same, but the wiring and how it works is slightly different.

If you havent seen these bikes before, all the wiring is fed into the headlight bucket and connected there.  I got the left side switch (turn signals, headlight) hit a mental wall on the right (on & kill switch, starter).  Got a package today with some little bits that will let me get the carbs mounted.  

[Tyler.M]

I dread electrical the most. What will you do with the old school fuses? Are there any options to wire up something more modern?

[.RJ]

I dread electrical the most. What will you do with the old school fuses? Are there any options to wire up something more modern?

Fuses... 



There's actually only one fuse, at the wire between the alternator/generator and the battery, and it looks like this



The electrical systems are very simple, which is good and bad - not a lot of relays means power is running through the switches for a lot of circuits.  I have a pretty good pile of connectors & tools from my last round of vintagehondamotorcycleitis so it was just time to go through the harness.

After taking a break last night I realized that one of the reasons that the right side (power/kill/start) switch didnt make sense to me was that the wiring harness I was working off of wasnt correct, I had wires that didnt match up.  I found what looks to be an accurate one so back at it later today.  

As I get into putting it back together I keep finding things that were taken off of the bike and discarded, like, mounts for the ignition coils and the voltage regulator.  I got a new style voltage regulator in the box but I'm going to wait to change that for my cafe racer dreams.

[.RJ]

Taking a break from wiring, we have carbamaphones!  Along with new boots and the correct throttle cable to operate them, they take something different than the OE cable.  They open and shut, and look to have the right jetting inside.





Removed the points



Replaced with electronic ignition trigger



I also swapped the clutch cable with an OE Honda one, and it fits just fine.  I'll have to email Motion Pro and see if I can send the other one back.  The pull seems really soft and doesnt return very quickly but I also think my clutch plates are stuck from sitting - if you drop the bike in gear and release the clutch the bike wont move.  Its pretty normal so I'm just hoping that's the case.  I could pull the clutch basket and take a look but... 

The bike came with a set of ignition coils but they're stamped "wat fong" brand.  I dont know that I'll be using those, but may give it a whirl.  I still need a bracket/mount for them, not sure why that got tossed by the previous owner(s).  

I bought an ignition switch off ebay this morning that should be the last electrical thing I need to be able to hook up the battery and see how badly I fucked up the wiring.  The bike came with an aftermarket switch, I put the key that I had in to see if it worked, turned it and the whole tumbler fell out of it... da fuq, guess I cant use that one.

I've been into these bikes for a while, but, its a nice change from working around a double vanos super vteck-tronic 3-stage code your tailights to the car thing - while drinking coffee this morning I watched this guy's video series on assembling a CB350 motor - there's 2 more parts, give it a watch if you're curious about how these old things go together.

Back to the headlight bucket now.

[ScottyB]

"wat fong"

yeah i don't think i'd go anywhere without a fire extinguisher after those go on

[.RJ]

I found a set of coils that will fit the stock bracket without any fab work, so those are on the way, no wat fong here.

Turns out the switches I was trying to wire in arent going to work, at least not with the stock wiring, as honda intended it to. The factory wiring has a provision to directly power the headlight with the alternator output, and I cant do that - power to the left side (light, turn, horn) switch is through a single wire, the circuits arent separated. Some internet research says that these switches are also just plain not durable and will fail. Its the same brand as the ignition switch that barfed its tumbler out, so I guess I shouldnt be surprised.

Working on some other options for handlebar switches but I think I know what I need to do. Once my ignition switch is here, even without any other controls I can wire power to the coils and jump the starter relay and hopefully get it fired.

[PDenbigh]

Looking awesome man!

[.RJ]

Unseasonably warm weather and some cancelled plans today left me with some time with this project today.  I moved the bike around to the back of the townhouse, my tools are in the basement and this makes everything much easier and its dryer and I can work on it at night.  Of course, this always has the potential to be a graveyard for the bike, too.  It needs to run because I'm not pushing it uphill to get it back out of the yard.

I had modified the stock handlebar controls to pass the wires under the bar, rather than through the bar, and removed the locating pins from the controls so its easier to adjust the handlebar position.



I got all of the wiring hooked up



And once that was done I can start troubleshooting.  I've got bad bulb in the tail light, but I do have power with the ignition & lights on, so that's good - although the circuit for the taillight leaves an extra wire in the headlight bucket which is not on the wiring diagram.  I guess I can just leave it unconnected.  Verified headlight works.  I think we're in good shape.

Coils mounted and plug leads trimmed, caps installed and mounted.  Crankcase filled with oil.

The starter was grounding against its switch, so I disassembled that and taped around the exposed wire.  Good to go now.

I picked up some chrome mufflers because I didnt like the black ones that came with the bike.  Have a little bit of sorting to do to get them mounted up, save that for the next work day.



We have turn signals



We have cranking



We have sparky



And thats where we stopped for the day.  Sorry to give y'all blue balls that its not making noise yet.  

In theory, if I put fuel to the carbs it would run now.  I have a bunch of stuff that needs to be bolted to the frame that I dont have fastners for - ignition switch mount, coils, flasher relay, etc, etc, etc - so I need to make a trip to home depot racing and get those.  I need to check the timing, as it is i just set it in the middle but didnt verify its right.  

The tank has a little bit of flash rust inside so I'd like to clean that up, but it shouldnt take much more than white vinegar to take up.   Of course, once its running I'm sure there's a whole list of old motorcycle sorting shit that will come up - carb sync'ing/tuning, adjusting brakes, etc, etc.  I dont know the last time this thing was on the road.  Right now the clutch pull feels really soft - everything is moving under the cover but I think the plates may be stuck together.  They should un-stick after the motor fires but, who knows.  This shit is why i hate doing the bare minimum to get the bike running.

And dont forget, preserve nature.



Until next time on "this old motorcycle..."

[Senor_Taylor]

Stop doing other things and do more things to this thing.

[.RJ]

would be nice if we'd had more than one day where temps were over 40* since I last touched it.

[Sijray21]

You still have a motorcycle?

[.RJ]

hey jayray, let me bring this thing over to your garage? i can get it finished sooner... have space heater, will travel.

[Sijray21]

This isn't like a Ginger/Durango scenario, is it?

I can make some room for this if you're serious. I now have a dedicated beer fridge.

[.RJ]

No, I promise I'm an adult. I can donate to the fridge.

[Sijray21]

Let's talk offline, but how are you moving this thing?

[.RJ]

very carefully