That seemed very un-Soichiro Honda like, so I rigged up a makeshift lift using two aluminum ladders, an aluminum loading ramp, some tie-downs and a ratchet hoist. One method is to drop the bike on its right side, remove the last engine bolt or two, and then wiggle it until it falls out of the frame. Who knows how Honda put the motors in so successfully, but watching YouTube videos showed how privateers remove them now. But like grizzly claw marks on a pine, the Honda front downtube scratches bore evidence that this motor had been out before. You don’t want to get it stuck, nor scratch the frame nor engine cases. It’s a peculiar dance - the motor has to rock backwards and then swing right, navigating through the frame opening like Robert Ballard guiding an ROV into the Titanic on a video screen. Which is not nearly so much fun as, say, removing a Yamaha Enduro or Hodaka engine, in that the Honda mill is a big, heavy lump that surely was installed in the frame using witchcraft and levitation during the Nixon era. Removing a Honda 350 twin cylinder head requires first removing the engine from the frame. That was a pretty enjoyable and straightforward hour, and I made sure to stash take-off parts and fasteners in separate boxes and Ziploc bags, labeled with a marker, to simplify and quicken reassembly. The first step was removing everything attached to the engine - or more completely everything attached to everything attached to the engine - including side covers, air cleaners and housings, carburetors, fuel lines, fuel tank and seat, exhaust system, footpeg assembly, and all wiring running from the under-seat area along the frame to the engine. And so, I set out to find out, and to make it right. With one rocker arm loose, I hoped to find only a bent valve, or at worst a broken one. When we left off the previous article, friends Amanda and Napper and son Derek had helped pinpoint the engine troubles as a complete lack of compression in the right-hand cylinder. And it might even, eventually, turn a buck. The process would create “rolling art,” I promised. Doing so will “make us feel good,” I suggested. If you read the July-August 2020 issue of Motorcycle Classics, you might have seen an article entitled Big Bang Theory, in which this author adopted a C元50 with a seriously hurt engine for the mechanical challenge it presented, but also as a way to encourage readers to adopt and nurse back to health broken bikes. I still have it somewhere, and it’s a perfect match for this Honda, scratched and weathered as it is.Īh yes, scratched and weathered records - and scramblers. As well it might have, because while living in New York City in 1981, I found the LP record in a thrift shop and bought it for something like $1.50 - a heavy hit at the time of 25-cent albums. Maybe few people know that in 1966, the instrumental group The Sandals created The Endless Summer surf movie theme song and threw it into an album stuffed with more surf songs as well as several cool bike instrumentals entitled, TR-6, Out Front, Good Greeves, and best of all, Scrambler.Īnd so it was, while putting the finishing touches on the 1973 Honda C元50 Scrambler rebuild seen here, the album would spring into mind.
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