CodeName Clara - my winter project

[McMurdo]

Congratulations on the bike, my second bike was a 1971 CB750, you have a real work horse there, I'm looking forward to the new pics and the continuing story.

[Downix]

making me miss my old Suzuki GT380 here...

[JamieKerr]

As promised, pictures

Here she is with the seat removed. It was not as easy as I thought it would be. I had to cut away the foam padding that serves as the seat cushion to get at the bolts which secure the seat to the frame. Fortunately I was able to take a blade and flatly cut the foam from the surface without damaging it. Should be easy to resecure it. It took me about an hour of flipping through my Clymer manual and looking at the tank with a flash light to realize there are no bolts holding the tank to the frame, and that I only had to lift it up and pull it out. Oops.


The seat has to come out before you can do anything else on the bike, as it blocks entry to the carbs and the battery. With the seat removed I was gained entrance to everything else. Yay!



Next stop was pulling out the airbox. Looking straight down at the air filter I realized in 5 seconds why I had been having so many issues before. My bike tends to want to idle high, and wastes a lot of fuel. Well one look at the air filter makes that issue's cause clear.



There is no cover to my air box. Even worse, there's no sort of protective shielding between the rear tire and the air box. This means that the back tire is constantly kicking everything on the road up into my air filter. Blech!
There's no air flow getting into my carbs.

Well. I quickly ripped the airbox out of my bike. It won't be going back on. Why? Because I have these babies now instead! Individual UNI racing filters. One of them slips over each carb, and they can be repeatedly cleaned and reused.

[JamieKerr]

With the airbox gone, I was able to easily remove the carbs.






These are the first carbs I've ever taken off any vehicle of any kind, so I don't know what really bad carbs look like. But I thought these looked rather bleh. I've done a lot of scrubbing with a toothbrush and carb cleaner, I'll post pics on that later.

Next up, began sanding of the seat.





I'm handing off my gas tank tomorrow, and a friend will get to sand blasting it sometime this week.

[runewolf]

Great old bike! I ride an antique myself, a 1978 Suzuki GS750. One thing to remember, the project never ends You will always find something to replace/repair/remove lol.

Here is an older pic of mine, little different now, I'm playing with painting the engine and other parts.

[ChattanCat]

Those carbs look pretty gunked up. Are they gunked up from sitting? The floats would do for a good cleaning and check to make sure they still float. I would check the needle valves also, that is where you will get in trouble with the gunk. The needles may also be worn down too.

[Rogerson785]

That is a really cool old bike, I almost bought the newer model back in 1992 when I returned from Saudi Arabia, instead I bought a 1991 Toyota 4x4 and she just died in 2007.

[sydnie7]

Missed this thread when it was new. Tell me, what does the Clymer manual title page have to say about "Editor"?

[Sionnach]

Looks like you are moving ahead, hope you are having fun.

[Bugbear]

Ya, what ChattanCat said; though I can't look at the pictures.

Leon used to take the whole engine off the motercycle; take it apart for the most part; then clean each part in five gallon buckets of solvent cleaner stuff. He had a Honda Silverwing and a Yamaha of some sort. It was like a ritual every six months and I hated having to help.

I do remember him having to replace the needel valve pins etc when he was trying to get the Honda up and running.