Before and After

Before

Time for a before and after picture. This is what the bike looked like on the day I picked it up. Doesn't look too bad overall.


After

The wheels definitely make the bike stand out. The gold complements the matt green really well.


So for the full list of work done:

• Engine Replacement (Engine mileage 8000 ish from install)
• Exhaust Upgrade
• New LED rear tail light (From a Kawasaki Versys)
• New smaller number plate fitted (Including GB mark)
• New Indicators all round
• Rear hugger repainted matt black
• Ohlins Shock spring reconditioned and repainted
• Exhaust headers repainted silver
• Thermostat Housing repainted
• Tank, Rear cowling, and Front mudguard repainted army green
• Rear wheels repainted Ford Olympic Gold (Metallic) and laquered
• New wheel bearings all round
• New Tyres (Bridgestone BT023R)
• 8000K HID Headlight Bulb Upgrade
• Oxford Heated Grips
• Carbs fully cleaned and reconditioned
• New Air Filter & Spark Plugs (Iridium)
• New Clutch Cable
• New Throttle Cables (push and pull)
• Reconditioned Front brake master cylinder - new seals and push rod
• Brake fluid replacement Front and Rear
• New speedometer cable
• Handlebar risers installed
• New bar ends installed
• Handlebars filled with weighted sand to reduce vibration
• Seat installed with rubber dampeners to further reduce vibration
• Replaced Ignition coil low voltage cable
• New front brake light switch
• Radiator repainted and reconditioned, fan housing repainted and reconditioned
• Fan fuse replaced

Gold wheels

Now I'm back to doing cosmetics again. I did a photoshop mockup of the bike with gold wheels and I think army green goes really well with gold so I get more rattle cans from Halfords and start preparing my wheels for a colour change. This time the primer I use is an Etch Primer which apparently sticks much better to problem surfaces like aluminium.


The colour I've used is a Ford Olympic gold. It was the one that closely resembled what I wanted and so I've put a couple of coats of the normal metallic paint, waited 24 hours and then a few coats of laquer.


As I'm respraying the wheels I figured it's time to get new tyres too. I've gone for the Bridgestone BT023R tyres. However they are quite a tough tyre to get on - way tougher than the Michelin Pilot 3's - but got them on eventually...


The front is done. I decided that if I'm totally overhauling my wheels I might aswell replace all the wheel bearings all round too. So new wheel bearings, nicely coloured wheels and new tyres...


Just got to swap out my rear tyre for the one I painted now. A much better look with the gold wheels - although that's my opinion :P


I've also decided I'm going to coat the tank in petrol resistant laquer as I've noticed the matt finish stains really easily so it's time to add a protective coat to the tank too.

Inspecting the engine damage

So now time to get curious and see what damage I've done to this engine. I start by first removing the cylinder head which was pretty easy. I wanted to get a look at the top of the pistons and valves and see what damage has been done. After I removed the cams, you can instantly see something is not quite right as that valve bucket was stuck in the up position.


Remove the valve shim bucket, and you can see the cotter pins which secure the valve spring onto the top of the valve has been destroyed, so the piston must have been hitting that valve lots of times during those few seconds of engine destruction...


More cotter pins destroyed. I'll keep the valve shims though as they are useful for doing valve clearances on my new engine later on...


So I noticed all the valves don't move at all - all of them are really hard to push down and I work to try and get one of them free and this is the result. The valve stems are really badly bent. Surprisingly though the pistons don't appear to be damaged - it seemed it was the valves that took the brunt of the impact.

Tail light upgrade

Once I installed the new engine, I decide to upgrade that rear tail light. I wasn't too happy with that old style bulb tail light. The one I found actually comes from a Kawasaki Versys and I really like the look and brightness of the led tail light on the road - really noticeable. Thankfully I was able to fashion some metal brackets so I could mount it in the existing holes on the bike and the rear cowling fits over it nicely. Almost looks stock!


Indicator also get replaced. I didn't like those rear side repeater things. Just have to sort out those massive holes in the cowling.


I was able to move the number plate up about an inch higher so exposing more of the back wheel which is always a bonus!

Time for a nice new engine

So even though the end came for the last engine, I went to go and pick up this new engine, and before doing that I strip down the bike and remove the old engine in preparation for getting a new one installed. I was surprised I managed to strip the bike and remove the engine in a single evening. Only took a couple of hours!


Old engine removed. At a later time I will strip it down completely and get a good look at all the damaged parts.


Nice new engine is here! Looks to be a lot cleaner than my old one and also the engine casings are in fantastic condition. Can't wait to get this installed and start it up!


Just to make a quick note of the mileage when the engine was reinstalled. This engine has 8000 miles on it and thankfully the guy had all the service history from the bike it came from.

Time for a colour change

This post should have been published before 'The End' post as I actually resprayed the bike before the engine went bang.

So I decide to get rid of the yellow colour. Whilst I like yellow, I'm not a huge fan of it generally on cars / bikes and I've always wanted an army green motorbike so let's go for it.

First things first I do a bit of fine sanding on the tank and then primer it up using some rust resistance primer.


The rear cowling comes off, and I hang it from the garage door and do the same. The spray paint I'm using is just the standard stuff that comes from Halfords. Let's see how long this lasts...


Now for the front mudguard. I always find if I don't put enough coats, when the paint is dry and I go to reinstall the part back on the bike and it rubs against something like the forks then the paint will scratch off easily.


Army green bike...





I then order some replacement black Honda logos from eBay and stick those on...


Looking good, now just a few more cosmetics to be sorted before I'm totally happy with it.

The end arrived

So it finally happened. Coming home riding down the M1 around 70, went for an overtake and increasing speed and the engine went bang. This was followed by what sounded like shattered wine glasses rattling around inside the engine.

Instantly I knew what had happened, as I was kinda expecting it although I didn't expect it to happen so soon, just 450 miles into this rebuilt engines life.

So clutch in and free wheeled to the hard shoulder, thankfully I was able to do that safely and get onto the hard shoulder without too much fuss from other traffic around me. Then it was time to wait for the AA - made it very clear to them that I'll need a recovery home so don't be trying to fix it on the road as this engine has had it.


So I get home, and I'm instantly curious to see what's happened so I pull the cam chain cover, and as I suspected, I've spun a bearing. Although what was surprising was that the main bearing closest to the cam chain had actually come loose and had come out of it's housing and made it's way onto the cam chain sprocket and then got chewed up by the cam chain as shown in the below pic. That was the sound I must have been hearing that sounded like shattered glass.


I turn the engine over a couple of times and you can now see it from a different angle. The bearing has almost moulded itself onto the cam chain sprocket. Tried to get it off with a screwdriver but that thing is well and truly stuck on there.


Now I'm very curious to see what other damage has been done. It's very likely that the valve timing was thrown out as the bearing got caught up in the cam chain so this may have caused valve and piston damage.

So a replacement engine is now on the way. This time round I'm not going to be stripping down the replacement engine, just doing the usual service items on that and then putting it in the bike. It's an engine which has done 8000 miles so much less mileage than what this had. It also looks to be in much better condition so looking forward to getting that in there.

I don't think this experience has put me off doing engine rebuilds (only if I needed to do one) but it has taught me a lot. Sometimes doing an engine rebuild is not always the most cost effective way of fixing an engine considering you can get pretty good used engines on eBay for near enough the same cost in replacement parts when doing a rebuild.

Secondly when it comes to engine rebuilds and replacing bearings. Do NOT and I mean absolutely DO NOT ignore what the service manual says about doing serious engine damage if you get the bearing selections wrong. They aren't kidding when they say that. Also don't mismatch crankcase halves as those things are machined as a set.

So looking back, I certainly would not have taken a sledge hammer to that oil cooler to get it off the engine block. The only reason I did that was because I had snapped off the rusted bolts trying to get the oil cooler off. That's another lesson learnt too - if you suspect a bolt is way too rusted to come off normally with a socket spanner, then use an impact wrench to get it off. The hammering action of the impact wrench is far less likely to snap it off compared to the twisting force of a socket spanner. Had I used the impact wrench in the first place, I would have been able to get the oil cooler off without problems.

I then wouldn't have cracked my lower crankcase and when I got the engine apart and replaced the crankshaft I should have ordered the correctly coloured bearings for the replacement crankshaft I put in there.

Another thing - plastigauge is not massively accurate. Whilst it gives an ok estimate of clearance it's not a pin point accurate measurement of clearance. I shouldn't have relied on this for my measurement of the clearances but also - considering my crankcase halves were mismatched anyway the crankshaft would have worn the bearings in the upper and lower crankcase halves at different rates causing the spun bearing that happened yesterday.

Finally - low oil pressure is pretty serious and a flickering oil light at idle was a good warning sign that things are going to get worse.

Day 36 - Bad News

So....here's the latest....

The oil light flickering on idle thing is what I was last investigating so I hooked up an Oil pressure gauge in place of the oil pressure sensor and turns out the oil pressure is in fact really low. 

To this end, I've ordered a replacement Oil Pump, Oil pressure relief valve seals and oil strainer pickup seals and I've replaced the oil pump with one thats not so badly pitted and the clearances are all within spec.

I started up the engine and checked the oil pressure - same problem. It's still low. Really low, and today I replaced the oil pressure sensor with a replacement one, and still...the oil pressure light flickers at idle.

This leads me to one conclusion. This low oil pressure is due to either the main bearings or the crank pin bearings having way too large of a clearance therefore making the oil pressure low.

Today I also discovered another problem. When I start the bike now, there's a whole load of nasty blue smoke that pours out of the exhaust. This blue smoke goes away after a couple of minutes but this tells me that the valve stem oil seals also need replacing as I never did these and just left the old ones in.

So at this I'm not really up for doing another engine rebuild, and if I was to do this all over again I would have realised that you can't just take 2 halves of 2 different engines and put them together as there is going to be very small clearance differences between the 2 halves thus the bearings will wear unevenly between the 2 halves and I believe this is what is causing my low oil pressure problems. 

It seems inevitable that this rebuilt engine will die....eventually. I'll keep riding it until that happens / and then when it does it just seems more cost effective to get a replacement engine, one that has not has so much damage done to it and I can swap it out without too much agro.

I've learnt a few lessons from this project anyway...

1) Assume nothing!

2) If I've gone all the way to tear down the engine, then replace all the replaceables and don't leave the old things in! This includes main bearings / crank pin bearings and valve stem oil seals.

3) Check everything! I never checked the oil pump and only upon having this problem did I realise that I had to take the oil pump out again and saw how badly damaged it was - although replacing it didn't fix my problem.

4) Sometimes it's just more cost effective to get a replacement than to rebuild. Looking at the cost of new bearings from Honda + the time and extra work it is to tear down the engine it's often cheaper just to get another engine from another bike and replace it and be done with it.

So thats that. It was a good project. I'll ride the engine until it dies / explodes and then a replacement will be on the way.

Day 35 - Oil Pressure Investigation

So time to investigate why I might be getting low oil pressure. After pulling the sump I notice a few metal shavings in the oil strainer, and I also notice that the O ring on the pressure relief valve needs replacing as the rubber is very worn. It's a good thing I can do this stuff with the engine still in the frame....


Oil pressure gauge still hooked up - that'll be the first sign I will used to determine if I've fixed the problem or need to pull the engine again...


Clutch and oil pump parts laid out on the garage floor. It'll stay this way until I get new parts.


So this I think is the problem. I took apart the oil pump and noticed that the oil pump gears are very much pitted and scored. I've read this can definitely cause low oil pressure. So at the moment things are looking hopeful that I don't have to pull the engine and it's recoverable. A new oil pump is on the way along with the new O rings for the oil strainer and oil pressure relief valve as I never replaced these. Also it's worth noting that I never overhauled the oil pump when I was rebuilding the engine and made the false assumption it was all fine. How wrong I was!


Oil pump laid out...


So as for right now, not much I can do until new parts arrive which will probably be some time next week.

Day 34 - Tail Light and Oil Pressure woes

So I got this low cost LED tail light, which I initially thought stopped working but in fact stopped working when I hooked it up to the bike because I wanted to see how it compared to the old bulb tail light. However I realised that the tail light positive terminal was being grounded by the presence of an old style bulb.

New LED looks ok, and is fairly bright when on the tail light, and brake light seems sufficient, I'll have to sort out that rather large gap around the edges of the light.


So now onto the next issue. I took a 70 mile ride from London, and when I got to my destination I noticed the oil light was flickering slightly only at idle. I then went ahead and measured the actual oil pressure using a pressure gauge and the oil pressure was in fact quite low. The manual says that the pressure should be around 71psi at 6000 rpm, but at 6000 rpm I was barely registering 30 psi which is quite low. After some research about what could be causing this, and the main results coming back that it's most likely the main or rod bearings, I've decided to try and eliminate the other potential causes and check out the oil pump, oil strainer and pressure relief valve. So I've pulled the sump and had a look inside the engine and overall it looks pretty clean...


I'm surprised the engine looks quite good inside and the oil sump didn't really have many metal shavings and neither did the oil when I drained it.


Only a small view of the crankshaft here, can't see the bearings but crank bearing caps look ok.


So next task is to pull the oil pump and have a closer look at that. If it's not the bearings then the only thing it could be is the oil pump. I really don't want to have to rebuild the engine again and if I have to do that I'm thinking I'll just go ahead and get another engine.

Day 33 - Exhaust, Clutch, Cosmetics and Oil Pressure

So now after riding the bike to work a couple of time successfully without issue - it's time to focus on the little annoying things. First thing was the stupidly heavy clutch that was on there. Now this could be due to aftermarket stiffer springs in combination with the shorty levers, but instead I had an idea of just extending the clutch arm for more leverage. Whilst being careful to ensure that the clutch still engages fully enough to allow proper gear changes. I wanted something that I could revert to should the need arise so all I had to do for this one was grind off the little rivet holding in place the cable holder and then bolt on a piece of metal which I cut into shape with a couple of extra holes. This proved to make the clutch much lighter.


The next thing was the exhaust. I found the stock exhaust to be way too quite around busy traffic in central London so I've gone for a fuel slash exhaust which gives it a much louder and deeper tone.


The number plate has been reduced in size, and completion of the wheel rim strips. I then decide I'm going to take it for a 70 mile ride from London being it's longest trip yet.


The trip goes well - bike performed great however when I arrived at my destination I noticed that the Oil light was flickering on and off. This would only happen at idle and even if I revved the engine only slightly the flickering would immediately stop.


After some reading and research I've concluded this must be a faulty oil pressure switch. However to be sure I've got an oil pressure gauge on the way so I can make sure the oil pressure is according to specs. A replacement oil pressure switch is also on the way so I can replace that when it arrives. For now I'm going to wait until those bits arrive before I ride it again. It's probably fine to ride as it is but I want to be sure that oil pressure switch is faulty and I'm getting correct oil pressure when tested with the gauge.

I also noticed that on longer rides my backside does tend to get a bit on the sore side and the hornet never really had the most comfortable of seats so I may upgrade the seat and reupholster it with a built in air hawk.

For now though, it's looking and sounding great - a few minor rust spots to sort out and cosmetics to sort out, and I really want to sort out that tail light and replace it with a LED tail light. Those leds I wired up myself turned out to be not so great and not bright enough so I'm gonna find a better solution for that one.

Day 32 - Lack of Power & Cosmetics

I then decide to take the bike for it's first ride to work - a nice ride to central London and back. I notice some serious power problems. Although initially I thought the bike had the power of a 600 - that was only at low throttle. As soon as I gave the bike some large amounts of throttle for more acceleration, the bike would hesitate and stutter and very very slowly accelerate. I concluded that this must be a carb problem and as I hadn't yet overhauled the carbs I decide to go ahead and remove the carbs from the bike, separate them and dismantle them to see if I can spot a problem.


I couldn't really find anything obviously wrong. No obviously clogged jets or anything like that. So I go ahead anyway and do what the manual says and get some carb cleaner and blast each of the holes in the jets and each passageway in the carbs with carb cleaner followed by large amounts of compressed air. I did this in turn to each carb, and put it all back in the bike.

To my surprise this fixed the problem! The bike now felt much MUCH more responsive and much better when giving it large amounts of throttle.

Perhaps my blasting of passageways and jets with carb cleaner must have done something. I then go ahead and replace the spark plugs and air filter element with new parts as these had not been done. I go for some nice iridium plugs.


After this success with the carbs, I focus more on cosmetics and take off the exhaust headers and repaint them with VHT paint.


The wheels also get treated to a reflective strip around the rims...


The one thing thats bothering now is that rear tail light. I'm not a fan of old style bulbs as they don't have the brightness or the responsiveness when hitting the brakes so I decide first to keep the tail light housing and make up a board with leds to replace the bulbs.


I may end up ditching this idea if it looks rubbish, but we'll see what it looks like...

Day 31 - Rectifier and HID

So whilst replacing the rectifier, I decide it's time to sort out some cosmetic things so I go ahead and remove the Ohlins shock thats in there and attempt to remove the spring so I can get rid of that rust and repaint it.


I also go ahead and remove the rear hugger. The carbon looked had faded so badly it looked rubbish. So I sand that down and respray it a nice clean matt black. The chain also needs replacing - there's a link that is totally seized and won't free up.


Due to the rectifier problems I had, I decide and replace the headlight bulb with an 8000k HID bulb. This gives the light output a bluish tint which I sort of like, but more importantly it doesn't take as much power from the bike and should therefore give the rectifier an easier time when charging the battery.