Thursday, February 4, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Another sweet CB400 café racer
I haven't been able to find any information on this one, it has been posted on a couple of sites but not by the builder. The tank seems to be from a CX500, it really complements the Ducati SS style fairing. The original comstar wheels complete the look. If anyone knows anything more about this sweet bike please contact me.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
My 3 valve twin story so far...
So how did I come to like the 3-valve twins so much?
Let’s see…
It all started back in early 1996 when I was attending school in Gravesend (UK). Our A-level technology teacher, Mr A. Byrom, announced that he was willing to help a couple of teams enter that year’s Youthbike competition in Lincolnshire. There were eventually three teams. The objective was to find a very cheap motorcycle and then customize it. The other teams managed to source a Honda CB125 twin and a sweet Honda CB160 twin.
After scouring the local small ads and the FreeAds paper to no avail, my mum remembered seeing an old bike parked down the side of a house further down the street. It belonged to a guy with an eye-patch, long hair and a freezer full of dead chicks (ha, the yellow fluffy kind) to feed to his owl. Contact was eventually made (he seemed to spend most of his time somewhere in East London, and a price was agreed, 100 quid. Well it turns out the bike was a 1980 Honda CB250N Super Dream. It was hand painted white, very dirty and more than a little rusty.
I pushed it the ¼ mile or so back home and set about trying to get it running. This was my first ever motorcycle and I was so excited. It wouldn’t start, but it had sparks.
Off came the carbs, they were stripped, cleaned and reassembled on the dining room table (start as you mean to continue). Buying the bike cleaned me out so I couldn’t afford a carburetor rebuild kit. I must have got something half-way right, as the bike would now start, albeit with the aid of starting fluid spray. It would rev in neutral but would die when trying to move in gear, and it would always spit back every 10 seconds or so.
The bike was stripped down and transported to school so the team and I could customize it. We hard-tailed it with struts made of steel tube, inverted the handlebars, ditched the fenders (mudguards) and cut the dual seat and mounted only the passenger section. I cut up an old leather jacket and stuck a patch to cover the foam where the seat was cut. The steel pan was screwed to the frame at the front (who needs a pivot?) and the original shocks were bolted to the back of the shortened seat. At the time it all seemed so original. We used chrome BSA mufflers.
The tank was painted black with orange piping and I made a Norton style Honda logo. The filler cap was an attempt at an aircraft style cap. An aluminum disk was mounted on some body filler with flathead screws around it, more for aesthetics than function. The removable part of the cap was another disk if aluminum with a very old brass cupboard knob screwed through it. It looked pretty good with the brass polished up.
Well, we didn’t win any prizes. But we did get this photo in now defunct British bike magazine AWOL.
We got the bike running at the competition, but it stopped very abruptly and wouldn’t turn over, I put it down to a piston seizure. The CB125 team who did nothing to their bike other than paint it assorted bright colors won a prize though. One of their dads worked for K’Nex (toy manufacturer) and talked them into sponsoring it. As the saying goes “we was robbed”.
I ended up keeping the bike as it was my money used to buy it and I did most of the work on it and it was my mum who got stuck with transporting it back and forth in her car, bless her.
Upon stripping it down, I found the camshaft sprocket bolts had come loose and the sprocket had fallen off and wedged in the camchain tunnel. By that time I was on the road with my first learner legal bike, a rather fast 1990 TZR125; the Super Dream languished in my back yard. I tried my hand at airbrushing a picture on the tank. I had a small airbrush for doing design artwork for A-levels, I had it hooked to an old Ford Granada spare wheel as a source of air. Seriously, they sell an adapter kit to do that.
The picture I attempted to replicate was the cover art from the 1977 printing of Sven Hassel novel, “Monte Cassino”. A rather grim picture of a shouting German soldier in a stahlhelm. I got halfway through and realized I actually kind of sucked at airbrushing.
The CB250 languished in the back yard while I went off to university with my cool Z650.
I was obviously smitten with the 3-valve twins though, as halfway through my first year at university I acquired a CB400N with a blown bottom end. It wasn’t in bad condition, and I remembered there was a CB400N engine minus cylinders and head in a small bike shop in Dartford. It had been sitting on their floor next to the counter for a long time. This was an old school bike shop. Wooden trays lined the shelves, filled with assorted used bits of BSAs, Triumphs and some Japanese stuff. The carpet was at least 40 years old and so trodden down with dirt and oil you couldn’t make out the pattern any more. The guys who worked there reminded me of Ronnie Barker in “Open All Hours”. Very old school, wearing brown aprons. It was this shop that bought my mum’s BSA Bantam from her when I wanted the Gobots base for my seventh birthday. I feel like a horrible little shit. Anyway, they wanted 150GBP for the bottom end (as much as I had paid for the whole bike), but I bought it. This project took a back-seat when my Z650 blew a hole in a piston and wrecked a big end.
Being bikeless and resorting to borrowing a friend’s GS125, I bought a CB250N from a guy near Nottingham. He was an AA Patrolman and vouched that it was a great bike, even if the red paint had faded to pink in the sun and the side panels had a horrible curvy script. He even threw in a leather jacket which (almost) fitted me to sweeten the deal (250 quid). I rode it back to Loughborough, but wasn’t impressed with the starting. It needed to be push started every time once I got it home so I wasn’t too happy. It was the end of the academic year though, and I had to go back home to Kent. The bike didn’t make it under its own power. I got as far as the M25/A12 junction and it died. No sparks but plenty of charge. While waiting to be recovered by the AA I laid down and took a nap, only to be woken by a very nice Motorway Patrol Policeman who explained that if I wanted to lay down I should do so way up the embankment; apparently people driving past had thought I was a dead body and been calling the police.
The starting problem turned out to be a bad stator. Again I found bike breakers in the UK to be the biggest rip-off merchants, being charged 65 pounds for a well used stator. At least I was running again, and with a pair of ace bars fitted I felt like Geoff Duke whizzing around the back lanes near Brands Hatch.
I had 3 months off for summer from university and landed a night shift position at a Co-op warehouse in Swanley. After the third shift I thoroughly hated it, and so when I heard what sounded like a big-end failing on my way up “Death Hill” (original local name for the A20 from Farningham up to West Kingsdown) on the way home I just thought “fuck it” and continued to ride the 8 or so miles home, knowing I had the 400 engine nearly complete back in Loughborough. The little 250 finally gave out a mile from home. It had become slower and noisier until by the time I got close to home it didn’t have enough power to idle without a lot of throttle. And damn the engine was hot.
I pushed it the rest of the way home, called in to work and said I wasn’t going back. I ended up getting a much better warehouse temp job with better hours and pay. Everything happens for a reason.
I did strip the 250 engine down but it was all totally fucked. The big-end bearings had indeed failed, and where I had run it into the ground all the bearing shells had magically transformed into what looked like weird feeler gauges protruding around the rods. And so a 3-valve twin engine died and was no more.
After a couple of weeks I got the train up to Loughborough to collect the bottom end and the rest of the top-end parts to build it up. I somehow managed to wedge it all into a very large rucksack. It was however a brutally heavy rucksack with which to walk back to the train station, get across London on the Underground and then walk from the train station at the other end. I managed it, leaked a bit of oil out of the rucksack into the luggage rack on one of the trains and looked like Quasimodo the whole time, being nearly bent double by the awkward weight and shape.
The bottom end was nice, the top end from the blown 400 was really nice, hone marks still visible in cylinders. It went together quickly, I bolted it into the frame and started it up. What a difference. While still not a very vibratory engine, the power pulses on the 400 are that much more obvious. It felt right. With the ace bars and a gloss black paint job (with union jack) and a Dunstall looking 2:1 it looked rather good. I had a lot of fun riding around the back lanes of north-west Kent. The twin front discs made a world of difference in the braking. I wouldn’t say the handling was as good as the Z650 but it was certainly acceptable.
Back in Loughborough the next year a car turned through a junction right across my path. My front wheel hit the side of the lady’s car (Ford Granada Mk3), catapulting me over the car and sending me spinning down the road on my back. I was wearing a rucksack with a plastic case socket set and that hard case acted something like a turtle shell and I think it prevented me getting hurt.
I pushed the bike home (a recurring theme). The front end was twisted, my thumb was broken and I was bruised up.
It occurred to me then that the bike was still insured as a 250 and the assessor was coming out to inspect the bike to see if it was a write-off. I had to make a quick run in the Capri back to Kent, where I pulled the engine from the original CB250 Youthbike project. I got the engine swapped over, the bike was a write-off and they said it wasn’t worth anything so I could keep it and fix it if I wanted to. He didn’t even look at the engine, all that work for nothing. And I learned my lesson.
Before I put the 400 lump back in I pulled it apart to check the crank bearings. Everything was ok so it went back together, this time with black engine paint and the edges of the cooling fins exposed. It looked quite smart and lasted a year until one day I was on the M3 southbound when my tacho stopped working. I didn’t think it was anything other than a broken cable until I started losing power. I pulled over onto the hard shoulder, checked the engine oil and found it be full of very fine metal filings. Luckily the bike and I were given a lift in to Basingstoke by a bike courier in a transit van. He wouldn’t accept payment, just encouraged me to do something to help a biker in need in the future if I had the chance.
I renewed my AA membership, had the bike picked up and taken home. Stripping the engine down I found the problem. In one of my previous forays into the engine I had neglected to loctite the bolt securing the oil pump drive sprocket. The bolt had backed out and the sprocket fallen off. The tacho is also driven from this area. I had done about 2 minutes of riding at 80mph before stopping the bike and I found the damage was extensive. All plain bearings trashed, pistons scored, camshaft bearings scored. That was the end of that engine, it would have been uneconomical to revive it.
Fast forward another year and I scored another CB250N (a deluxe model from 81) from another friend for another paltry sum (I think it was 50 quid). I stripped it down to transport it home in my car. By this time I had sold my Z650 and had gone through an Enfield 350, RG400, a CBR1000 and a CBX250RS but still wanted a working Superdream. That summer I café’d the latest CB250. I fitted new tires, bullet indicators, resprayed black again, and rather than ace bars I bought some proper clip-ons. It sat, waiting to be completed in my parents back yard in Kent for a number of years once I had started work after university. I was busy with my other cool vehicles, a lifted Hilux, a BMW 320 coupe with M3 bodykit, a Moto Guzzi V1000 (turned into a really sweet café racer), a Triumph Trophy 1200, KLR650, XT600 project, CX500 aborted projected and Moto Guzzi 1100 Sport. There never seemed to be enough time for the CB250, and when I finally turned my attention to it the new tires had gone flat and cracked, everything was rusted and the carb rubbers had disintegrated.
When I moved to the USA the last Super Dream stayed in my parents’ back yard until they disposed of it a couple of years ago. Rest In Peace little Super Dream…and all the other Super Dreams I broke over the years. An unforseen side-effect of my mechanical adventures with Super Dreams is that my dear old dad who gave me so much advice with bikes in general now has a strong dislike of Super Dreams which I'm not sure is wholly deserved.
Now I have a 1969 Harley-Davidson XLH900 chopper project and it’s going great. But I still have a fondness for the Honda 3-valve twins and the chopper is more for cruising than general riding.
How I came by my latest acquisition is interesting. I hadn’t actually planned to get another bike just yet even though I’ve wanted to get a bike on the road since I moved here.
After watching the excellent motion picture “The World’s Fastest Indian”, with Anthony Hopkins’ great portrayal of Bert Munroe and his quest for speed at Bonneville, I got to looking at the current land speed records for the different motorcycle frame and engine types and capacities. I noticed that there are many classes not listed, meaning there is no current record. There are literally hundreds of classes though, so a cursory glance doesn’t indicate just how many records aren’t filled. A couple of hours with an increasingly large Excel spreadsheet filled in the blanks. And then my wheels started to turn; if I could find a class in which I could enter a bike built using a Honda 3 valve twin engine I could set a land speed record by default. I would, in effect, have the “World’s Fastest Super Dream”!!!
Looking on eBay one afternoon for any interesting pre-1956 Brit twin crankcases (to start building a vintage LSR bike) or 3 valve twin parts, I found a CM400 parts bike, pickup only, starting bid $9.99, no bids yet and with only 3 hrs left to run. After all the times I’ve seen cool stuff on eBay go really cheap but a pickup only and too far away here was a 3 valve twin very close by. I plunked down a bid ($31.02, just in case) and hunkered down, watching the auction every few minutes expecting someone to snipe at the last minute. The snipe never came. I couldn’t believe it.
The next day I went to collect the bike. The seller was immensely helpful and helped me load it into my car. Yeah, still stripping bikes down and transporting them by car rather than truck or van after all these years.
The bike was mostly complete but with the front end removed. It has less than 10000 miles on the clock but has been sitting in rainy western Washington for about 20 years. Extensive rust, aluminum oxidation and perished rubber mask what is actually a very stock bike with no rounded off screws.
Off came the carbs, the rubbers temporarily repaired with RTV silicone, carbs stripped and cleaned properly. With the carbs back on, I kicked it over a couple of times and not only did it start, it idled nicely, no blue oil smoke, revs ok too. The carbs still need a bit of work, and some more rubber components replaced but I’m very happy with the bike. You just can’t complain for $9.99…
The plan had been to build a land speed record bike, but this CM400 is just too complete and stock to butcher just yet. A couple more weeks and I should have it on the road. A nice economical bike for general riding and commuting, it will save me a lot of money in gas.
The land speed project will happen at a later date, but for now I’m happy with the CM400. To make it even better, my brother back in England just bought a CB250N in decent condition so we can compare notes back and forth as we work on our bikes.
Let’s see…
It all started back in early 1996 when I was attending school in Gravesend (UK). Our A-level technology teacher, Mr A. Byrom, announced that he was willing to help a couple of teams enter that year’s Youthbike competition in Lincolnshire. There were eventually three teams. The objective was to find a very cheap motorcycle and then customize it. The other teams managed to source a Honda CB125 twin and a sweet Honda CB160 twin.
After scouring the local small ads and the FreeAds paper to no avail, my mum remembered seeing an old bike parked down the side of a house further down the street. It belonged to a guy with an eye-patch, long hair and a freezer full of dead chicks (ha, the yellow fluffy kind) to feed to his owl. Contact was eventually made (he seemed to spend most of his time somewhere in East London, and a price was agreed, 100 quid. Well it turns out the bike was a 1980 Honda CB250N Super Dream. It was hand painted white, very dirty and more than a little rusty.
I pushed it the ¼ mile or so back home and set about trying to get it running. This was my first ever motorcycle and I was so excited. It wouldn’t start, but it had sparks.
Off came the carbs, they were stripped, cleaned and reassembled on the dining room table (start as you mean to continue). Buying the bike cleaned me out so I couldn’t afford a carburetor rebuild kit. I must have got something half-way right, as the bike would now start, albeit with the aid of starting fluid spray. It would rev in neutral but would die when trying to move in gear, and it would always spit back every 10 seconds or so.
The bike was stripped down and transported to school so the team and I could customize it. We hard-tailed it with struts made of steel tube, inverted the handlebars, ditched the fenders (mudguards) and cut the dual seat and mounted only the passenger section. I cut up an old leather jacket and stuck a patch to cover the foam where the seat was cut. The steel pan was screwed to the frame at the front (who needs a pivot?) and the original shocks were bolted to the back of the shortened seat. At the time it all seemed so original. We used chrome BSA mufflers.
The tank was painted black with orange piping and I made a Norton style Honda logo. The filler cap was an attempt at an aircraft style cap. An aluminum disk was mounted on some body filler with flathead screws around it, more for aesthetics than function. The removable part of the cap was another disk if aluminum with a very old brass cupboard knob screwed through it. It looked pretty good with the brass polished up.
Well, we didn’t win any prizes. But we did get this photo in now defunct British bike magazine AWOL.
We got the bike running at the competition, but it stopped very abruptly and wouldn’t turn over, I put it down to a piston seizure. The CB125 team who did nothing to their bike other than paint it assorted bright colors won a prize though. One of their dads worked for K’Nex (toy manufacturer) and talked them into sponsoring it. As the saying goes “we was robbed”.
I ended up keeping the bike as it was my money used to buy it and I did most of the work on it and it was my mum who got stuck with transporting it back and forth in her car, bless her.
Upon stripping it down, I found the camshaft sprocket bolts had come loose and the sprocket had fallen off and wedged in the camchain tunnel. By that time I was on the road with my first learner legal bike, a rather fast 1990 TZR125; the Super Dream languished in my back yard. I tried my hand at airbrushing a picture on the tank. I had a small airbrush for doing design artwork for A-levels, I had it hooked to an old Ford Granada spare wheel as a source of air. Seriously, they sell an adapter kit to do that.
The picture I attempted to replicate was the cover art from the 1977 printing of Sven Hassel novel, “Monte Cassino”. A rather grim picture of a shouting German soldier in a stahlhelm. I got halfway through and realized I actually kind of sucked at airbrushing.
The CB250 languished in the back yard while I went off to university with my cool Z650.
I was obviously smitten with the 3-valve twins though, as halfway through my first year at university I acquired a CB400N with a blown bottom end. It wasn’t in bad condition, and I remembered there was a CB400N engine minus cylinders and head in a small bike shop in Dartford. It had been sitting on their floor next to the counter for a long time. This was an old school bike shop. Wooden trays lined the shelves, filled with assorted used bits of BSAs, Triumphs and some Japanese stuff. The carpet was at least 40 years old and so trodden down with dirt and oil you couldn’t make out the pattern any more. The guys who worked there reminded me of Ronnie Barker in “Open All Hours”. Very old school, wearing brown aprons. It was this shop that bought my mum’s BSA Bantam from her when I wanted the Gobots base for my seventh birthday. I feel like a horrible little shit. Anyway, they wanted 150GBP for the bottom end (as much as I had paid for the whole bike), but I bought it. This project took a back-seat when my Z650 blew a hole in a piston and wrecked a big end.
Being bikeless and resorting to borrowing a friend’s GS125, I bought a CB250N from a guy near Nottingham. He was an AA Patrolman and vouched that it was a great bike, even if the red paint had faded to pink in the sun and the side panels had a horrible curvy script. He even threw in a leather jacket which (almost) fitted me to sweeten the deal (250 quid). I rode it back to Loughborough, but wasn’t impressed with the starting. It needed to be push started every time once I got it home so I wasn’t too happy. It was the end of the academic year though, and I had to go back home to Kent. The bike didn’t make it under its own power. I got as far as the M25/A12 junction and it died. No sparks but plenty of charge. While waiting to be recovered by the AA I laid down and took a nap, only to be woken by a very nice Motorway Patrol Policeman who explained that if I wanted to lay down I should do so way up the embankment; apparently people driving past had thought I was a dead body and been calling the police.
The starting problem turned out to be a bad stator. Again I found bike breakers in the UK to be the biggest rip-off merchants, being charged 65 pounds for a well used stator. At least I was running again, and with a pair of ace bars fitted I felt like Geoff Duke whizzing around the back lanes near Brands Hatch.
I had 3 months off for summer from university and landed a night shift position at a Co-op warehouse in Swanley. After the third shift I thoroughly hated it, and so when I heard what sounded like a big-end failing on my way up “Death Hill” (original local name for the A20 from Farningham up to West Kingsdown) on the way home I just thought “fuck it” and continued to ride the 8 or so miles home, knowing I had the 400 engine nearly complete back in Loughborough. The little 250 finally gave out a mile from home. It had become slower and noisier until by the time I got close to home it didn’t have enough power to idle without a lot of throttle. And damn the engine was hot.
I pushed it the rest of the way home, called in to work and said I wasn’t going back. I ended up getting a much better warehouse temp job with better hours and pay. Everything happens for a reason.
I did strip the 250 engine down but it was all totally fucked. The big-end bearings had indeed failed, and where I had run it into the ground all the bearing shells had magically transformed into what looked like weird feeler gauges protruding around the rods. And so a 3-valve twin engine died and was no more.
After a couple of weeks I got the train up to Loughborough to collect the bottom end and the rest of the top-end parts to build it up. I somehow managed to wedge it all into a very large rucksack. It was however a brutally heavy rucksack with which to walk back to the train station, get across London on the Underground and then walk from the train station at the other end. I managed it, leaked a bit of oil out of the rucksack into the luggage rack on one of the trains and looked like Quasimodo the whole time, being nearly bent double by the awkward weight and shape.
The bottom end was nice, the top end from the blown 400 was really nice, hone marks still visible in cylinders. It went together quickly, I bolted it into the frame and started it up. What a difference. While still not a very vibratory engine, the power pulses on the 400 are that much more obvious. It felt right. With the ace bars and a gloss black paint job (with union jack) and a Dunstall looking 2:1 it looked rather good. I had a lot of fun riding around the back lanes of north-west Kent. The twin front discs made a world of difference in the braking. I wouldn’t say the handling was as good as the Z650 but it was certainly acceptable.
Back in Loughborough the next year a car turned through a junction right across my path. My front wheel hit the side of the lady’s car (Ford Granada Mk3), catapulting me over the car and sending me spinning down the road on my back. I was wearing a rucksack with a plastic case socket set and that hard case acted something like a turtle shell and I think it prevented me getting hurt.
I pushed the bike home (a recurring theme). The front end was twisted, my thumb was broken and I was bruised up.
It occurred to me then that the bike was still insured as a 250 and the assessor was coming out to inspect the bike to see if it was a write-off. I had to make a quick run in the Capri back to Kent, where I pulled the engine from the original CB250 Youthbike project. I got the engine swapped over, the bike was a write-off and they said it wasn’t worth anything so I could keep it and fix it if I wanted to. He didn’t even look at the engine, all that work for nothing. And I learned my lesson.
Before I put the 400 lump back in I pulled it apart to check the crank bearings. Everything was ok so it went back together, this time with black engine paint and the edges of the cooling fins exposed. It looked quite smart and lasted a year until one day I was on the M3 southbound when my tacho stopped working. I didn’t think it was anything other than a broken cable until I started losing power. I pulled over onto the hard shoulder, checked the engine oil and found it be full of very fine metal filings. Luckily the bike and I were given a lift in to Basingstoke by a bike courier in a transit van. He wouldn’t accept payment, just encouraged me to do something to help a biker in need in the future if I had the chance.
I renewed my AA membership, had the bike picked up and taken home. Stripping the engine down I found the problem. In one of my previous forays into the engine I had neglected to loctite the bolt securing the oil pump drive sprocket. The bolt had backed out and the sprocket fallen off. The tacho is also driven from this area. I had done about 2 minutes of riding at 80mph before stopping the bike and I found the damage was extensive. All plain bearings trashed, pistons scored, camshaft bearings scored. That was the end of that engine, it would have been uneconomical to revive it.
Fast forward another year and I scored another CB250N (a deluxe model from 81) from another friend for another paltry sum (I think it was 50 quid). I stripped it down to transport it home in my car. By this time I had sold my Z650 and had gone through an Enfield 350, RG400, a CBR1000 and a CBX250RS but still wanted a working Superdream. That summer I café’d the latest CB250. I fitted new tires, bullet indicators, resprayed black again, and rather than ace bars I bought some proper clip-ons. It sat, waiting to be completed in my parents back yard in Kent for a number of years once I had started work after university. I was busy with my other cool vehicles, a lifted Hilux, a BMW 320 coupe with M3 bodykit, a Moto Guzzi V1000 (turned into a really sweet café racer), a Triumph Trophy 1200, KLR650, XT600 project, CX500 aborted projected and Moto Guzzi 1100 Sport. There never seemed to be enough time for the CB250, and when I finally turned my attention to it the new tires had gone flat and cracked, everything was rusted and the carb rubbers had disintegrated.
When I moved to the USA the last Super Dream stayed in my parents’ back yard until they disposed of it a couple of years ago. Rest In Peace little Super Dream…and all the other Super Dreams I broke over the years. An unforseen side-effect of my mechanical adventures with Super Dreams is that my dear old dad who gave me so much advice with bikes in general now has a strong dislike of Super Dreams which I'm not sure is wholly deserved.
Now I have a 1969 Harley-Davidson XLH900 chopper project and it’s going great. But I still have a fondness for the Honda 3-valve twins and the chopper is more for cruising than general riding.
How I came by my latest acquisition is interesting. I hadn’t actually planned to get another bike just yet even though I’ve wanted to get a bike on the road since I moved here.
After watching the excellent motion picture “The World’s Fastest Indian”, with Anthony Hopkins’ great portrayal of Bert Munroe and his quest for speed at Bonneville, I got to looking at the current land speed records for the different motorcycle frame and engine types and capacities. I noticed that there are many classes not listed, meaning there is no current record. There are literally hundreds of classes though, so a cursory glance doesn’t indicate just how many records aren’t filled. A couple of hours with an increasingly large Excel spreadsheet filled in the blanks. And then my wheels started to turn; if I could find a class in which I could enter a bike built using a Honda 3 valve twin engine I could set a land speed record by default. I would, in effect, have the “World’s Fastest Super Dream”!!!
Looking on eBay one afternoon for any interesting pre-1956 Brit twin crankcases (to start building a vintage LSR bike) or 3 valve twin parts, I found a CM400 parts bike, pickup only, starting bid $9.99, no bids yet and with only 3 hrs left to run. After all the times I’ve seen cool stuff on eBay go really cheap but a pickup only and too far away here was a 3 valve twin very close by. I plunked down a bid ($31.02, just in case) and hunkered down, watching the auction every few minutes expecting someone to snipe at the last minute. The snipe never came. I couldn’t believe it.
The next day I went to collect the bike. The seller was immensely helpful and helped me load it into my car. Yeah, still stripping bikes down and transporting them by car rather than truck or van after all these years.
The bike was mostly complete but with the front end removed. It has less than 10000 miles on the clock but has been sitting in rainy western Washington for about 20 years. Extensive rust, aluminum oxidation and perished rubber mask what is actually a very stock bike with no rounded off screws.
Off came the carbs, the rubbers temporarily repaired with RTV silicone, carbs stripped and cleaned properly. With the carbs back on, I kicked it over a couple of times and not only did it start, it idled nicely, no blue oil smoke, revs ok too. The carbs still need a bit of work, and some more rubber components replaced but I’m very happy with the bike. You just can’t complain for $9.99…
The plan had been to build a land speed record bike, but this CM400 is just too complete and stock to butcher just yet. A couple more weeks and I should have it on the road. A nice economical bike for general riding and commuting, it will save me a lot of money in gas.
The land speed project will happen at a later date, but for now I’m happy with the CM400. To make it even better, my brother back in England just bought a CB250N in decent condition so we can compare notes back and forth as we work on our bikes.
Here are a couple of YouTube videos showing how not to treat a 3-valve twin, or any other motorcycle for that matter.
The first is just engine abuse, there is obviously something very wrong with the valve clearances, cam timing, ignition timing or carburation. Here's a quick tip; if your exhaust headers start glowing red hot you should probably not continue to rev the crap out of the bike.
And here we have a 400 twin running with no headers at all, presumably to enable the operator to see flames. I won't list all the reasons why this is just wrong. It does sound rather comical though, like a popcorn or bubble blowing machine.
The first is just engine abuse, there is obviously something very wrong with the valve clearances, cam timing, ignition timing or carburation. Here's a quick tip; if your exhaust headers start glowing red hot you should probably not continue to rev the crap out of the bike.
And here we have a 400 twin running with no headers at all, presumably to enable the operator to see flames. I won't list all the reasons why this is just wrong. It does sound rather comical though, like a popcorn or bubble blowing machine.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Turbo CB400
Here we have a Brazilian CB400 with a turbocharger!
You never know when you'll need to inflate a rubber glove with your turbo. Quite mad!
It's also guaranteed to turn heads at your local bike gathering, just check out that dump valve hiss. Badass!
Much respect for working with what's available...
You never know when you'll need to inflate a rubber glove with your turbo. Quite mad!
It's also guaranteed to turn heads at your local bike gathering, just check out that dump valve hiss. Badass!
Much respect for working with what's available...
CBR450? Surely you mean CBR400...
The final 3-valve Twin
Due to the political situation in Brazil, foreign imports weren’t allowed until 1990. So while the rest of the world had the CBR400F with its water cooled 4 cylinder, 16 valve engine, Moto Honda da Amazonia had to work with what it already had and so went back to the drawing board with the CB450. By the late 80s, the frame design, suspension, styling, brakes and handling of the CB450 were out of date. While still a fine motorcycle in its own right, the CB450 wasn’t cutting it against the RD 350 LC with its high power, light weight and monoshock rear suspension.
HDA came up with a whole new model, the CBR450SR.
The 3 valve engine was kept from the CB450, some slight tuning pushing the power up to just over 46 BHP. Everything else was all new, and much more in keeping with designs enjoyed by the rest of the world. Honda’s Aero styling similar to the CBR400F,600F and 1000F models gave the new CBR450 a great look and good aerodynamics.
Wide 17” wheels allowed the use of modern rubber and helped it handle very well. Braking was improved with twin piston calipers and dual front discs.
The CBR450SR was never imported to Europe and is virtually unknown outside of South America. There was never any point in trying to market what was essentially a heavier CBR400 with an over-bored 400 Super Dream engine when the CBR400 was available as a grey import from Japan. The CBR450SR could never compete against the newer liquid cooled fours coming out of Japan in the late 80s.
The CBR450SR was produced from 1987 to 1994 and represents the ultimate development of the 3 valve twin as a sporting production motorcycle.
CB400 Street Tracker
YouTube video of a CB400T street tracker conversion from Poland. Most conversions involving a 3 valve twin are bobbers, choppers or cafe racers. Scramblers and street trackers are virtually non-existant.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
The Brazilian Connection
Riders in the UK will probably remember the CB450DX, the CB350S and the CB450S. These models were produced by Honda in Brazil for the European market. The CB450DX continued largely where the CB400N left off, but the CB350S and CB450S (which sold best in Germany) featured a very interesting tubular trellis frame very similar to the sporting frames produced by Harris in the UK and were fine handling, reliable bikes popular with dispatch riders and those looking for good honest motorcycling. More on these later...
But why Brazil?
Honda’s policy in the early to mid-1970s was "producing products in the markets where they are sold" and to find markets suitable for growth of the motorcycle segment.
In September 1975 Honda began production of a new manufacturing facility in Manaus, Brazil. It was originally going to be in Sao Paulo but the restrictions in that area forced Honda to look elsewhere. Manaus was a free-trade port way up the Amazon and Honda received very good tax breaks in setting up there.
Due to the distance from the main automotive manufacturing sectors in and around Sao Paulo, the new Honda factory would make a high proportion of parts in-house.
Beginning with the ubiquitous CG125, Moto Honda da Amazonia Ltda.(HDA) quickly grew to produce a high volume of motorcycles and several models, including the CB400 in 1980. The 3 valve engine for the CB400 was imported from the Honda factory at Kumamoto in Japan but most other components were manufactured locally.
Brazil’s bike market at the time of the CB400 being released was dominated by smaller models, including Honda’s own 125cc and 180cc models. Whereas in Europe, Japan and the United States the CB400 was never considered a large or particularly high performance machine, in Brazil it was a step above the smaller bikes, indeed, only the VW Beetle powered Amazonas was larger.
Physically bigger than the swarms of small bikes, lots more power and torque and with good handling characteristics it gave Brazilian buyers a real motorcycling experience.
In 1983 the CB450 was released with the engine capacity rising from 395cc to 447cc. Power improved slightly, torque improved significantly. These new engines were assembled in Brazil. The CB400 model received a facelift to match the new 450 and remained on sale for one year after the release of the CB450.
A number of variations on the CB450 were released including the Sport version which featured a bikini fairing but no actual increase in power. But the adverts sure made it look fast!
The styling on the Brazilian CBs was similar to that of the Super Dreams in other markets but with some subtle differences to tank and side panel shape. HDA discontinued the use of Comstar wheels in 1983, opting instead for cast aluminum wheels with six spokes (in three pairs).
For most of the 1980s the CB400/450 was the largest capacity motorcycle available in Brazil, and even now that larger bikes are being imported they are often very expensive. The result is that the CB models are still popular, and there are many great customized Brazilian CB400s.
Monday, January 25, 2010
CB250N / CB400N Superdream
In 1978 the European market received the CB250N / CB400N Super Dreams...and what super dreams they were! These bikes replaced the 250/400 Dreams in Europe which had been criticised for their bland styling.
The main difference between the Dreams and the Super Dreams was the bodywork. The addition of a 6th gear helped keep the revs down at cruising speeds. What Honda termed "Euro Styling" was rather slab sided with the side panels and seat blending in with the shape of the tank.
This style actually mimics that of the twin cam CB750/900 and even the mighty CB1100R racers. The Japanese home market and the US market also had these bikes starting in 1980, but they were designated Super Hawks in Japan and there was no change in the USA, the bikes continuing to carry the Hawk name and the T suffix.
The CB400N had dual front disk brakes while the 250 had to make do with the same Tokico single (albeit larger diameter) disk from the Hawk.
Before the UK learner restriction was lowered to 125cc the Super Dream was a popular starter bike.
Just why Honda chose to use the Dream name rather than Hawk in Europe I will never understand, as Hawk suits the bike far more than Dream.
The main difference between the Dreams and the Super Dreams was the bodywork. The addition of a 6th gear helped keep the revs down at cruising speeds. What Honda termed "Euro Styling" was rather slab sided with the side panels and seat blending in with the shape of the tank.
This style actually mimics that of the twin cam CB750/900 and even the mighty CB1100R racers. The Japanese home market and the US market also had these bikes starting in 1980, but they were designated Super Hawks in Japan and there was no change in the USA, the bikes continuing to carry the Hawk name and the T suffix.
The CB400N had dual front disk brakes while the 250 had to make do with the same Tokico single (albeit larger diameter) disk from the Hawk.
Before the UK learner restriction was lowered to 125cc the Super Dream was a popular starter bike.
Just why Honda chose to use the Dream name rather than Hawk in Europe I will never understand, as Hawk suits the bike far more than Dream.
1979 Honda CB400T
Here is a lovely cafe racer conversion of a CB400T Hawk I by .nutter on Flickr. I think this shows that with a bit of effort it's possible to make a great cafe racer out of the Hawk. The brilliant photography just makes it even better.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
It's alive!
After a little work on the carbs and repairing the inlet rubbers it fired up with the kicker fairly quickly. It's running without a battery...just goes to show that these bikes do generate electricity for sparks.
The float bowls are overflowing, so I need new float needles, still need airbox rubbers and a load of other things to do but I'm happy it seems to run and rev ok.
The float bowls are overflowing, so I need new float needles, still need airbox rubbers and a load of other things to do but I'm happy it seems to run and rev ok.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
My new project!
It was destiny.
With my Sportster project stalled due to lack of funds, and while reminiscing about the 3-valve twins I used to own, a random eBay search brought up a CM400 parts bike in my local area. No bids, $9.99 to start, and with 3 hrs left til the end I plunked down my bid, thinking someone was going to try sniping at the last second. But like I said, it was destiny. I won the auction, went to pick the bike up the next day and lo and behold it was in remarkably complete condition.
The top tree had been removed along with the clamp bolts from the lower tree, allowing the weight of the bike to bend the lower tree clamps. The seat was missing, some parts removed, but for $9.99 you just can't argue.
The poor CM has been off the road for a long time, it looks like the last time it was registered was in the 80s. I think the mileage is pretty low (<10,000) but sitting in the wet part of Washington state has wreaked havoc with the surface finish of a lot of parts. Aluminum is oxidized, steel rusted, but it seems in good condition where it matters.
With my Sportster project stalled due to lack of funds, and while reminiscing about the 3-valve twins I used to own, a random eBay search brought up a CM400 parts bike in my local area. No bids, $9.99 to start, and with 3 hrs left til the end I plunked down my bid, thinking someone was going to try sniping at the last second. But like I said, it was destiny. I won the auction, went to pick the bike up the next day and lo and behold it was in remarkably complete condition.
The top tree had been removed along with the clamp bolts from the lower tree, allowing the weight of the bike to bend the lower tree clamps. The seat was missing, some parts removed, but for $9.99 you just can't argue.
The poor CM has been off the road for a long time, it looks like the last time it was registered was in the 80s. I think the mileage is pretty low (<10,000) but sitting in the wet part of Washington state has wreaked havoc with the surface finish of a lot of parts. Aluminum is oxidized, steel rusted, but it seems in good condition where it matters.
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