Project Café 1973 Honda CB500, part 3
Rebuilding the carburetors
May/June 2009
By Landon Hall
 |
Cutting spokes to separate the hubs from the rims.
Landon Hall
|
Spring is coming quick, summer will go too fast, and before we know it, it will be October and time for the 5th Annual Barber Vintage Festival, where we plan to give away our Project Café CB500. Progress since our last issue has been a little slow, as we’ve labored through the cold winter with just a few nice days here and there. Between now and our next issue, we hope to install new rings and replace our one bad piston, get the engine back in the frame, and begin hanging parts on our newly powder-coated frame.
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In part 2 of Project Café 1973 Honda CB500, we showed you how to rebuild the Honda’s forks. This issue, we’ll focus on rebuilding the carburetors. While our step-by-step should make the process pretty clear, we highly suggest a good Chilton or Haynes shop manual to help sort out the many details in removing and installing the carbs. A picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words.
Wheel rebuild
Last issue, we announced plans to have the wheels on our CB500 rebuilt by Buchanan’s Spoke & Rim, Inc. (www.BuchananSpokes.net) in Azusa, Calif. After a quick call to the company, they told us since they’ll be rebuilding our wheels with new rims and spokes, they only want our wheel hubs and bearings. This meant taking apart our old wheels. A small set of bolt cutters and a few minutes later, we’d cut each spoke, separated the hubs from the rims and removed the remaining pieces of spoke left in the hubs. Since the entire surface of the hub is now easily accessible, we’ll give our hubs a light polishing and have new bearings pressed into them before we box them up and ship them out. For more on Buchanan’s Spoke & Rim, Inc., see our story on page 44, and watch a video of us cutting spokes on the Motorcycle Classics homepage.
Win this bike!
We’re building it, but you could own it: When we’re finished, the BikeBandit.com/Motorcycle Classics Project Café Honda CB500 could be yours! We’ll be giving the bike away at the 5th Annual Barber Vintage Festival Oct. 17, 2009. Enter now for your chance to win, and check our July/August 2009 issue for another update on Project Café!
Click here for Part 4 of our 1973 Honda CB500 build.