Important info when working on a CB550 motor

As you can see by the dates in these posts it's taking me a long time to work on my CB550F. Work comes first and this year I've been busy.

Here are some observations.

When I split the cases a couple of months ago I put the transmission parts in a bag. Last week when I started putting the motor back together, the bearing race seen in the photo fell off and out fell some tiny needle bearings! Usually needle bearings are "caged," that is they are held together in a race. This set of bearings has a race but they are not attached. After sitting around for months the oil keeping them in place drained out and the bearings scattered. Most of them were easy to find but I had to hunt around the carport to find the last two on the floor. There are a total of 16 needle bearings. I packed them with automotive grease to keep them together when I put the race back on the transmission main shaft.

Another item to keep an eye on is the kickstart shaft. It's easy to take motors apart and harder to remember how they go back together. I installed the two transmission shafts and saw that the countershaft was engaging the kickstart shaft. Then I was trying to remember how these two shafts should work together. When I turned the countershaft it would wind up the kickstart shaft. That's okay for starting the engine with the kickstarter but we don't want the two gears to mesh all the time.

I was having a hard time figuring this out. So I went to SOHC4.NET and looked for an answer. I did find one post with a video where a guy had a similar problem. Some other forum members made some suggestions, he said "thanks" and did not ever go back to explain if the suggestions worked. I e-mailed the guy and he didn't respond.

Next, I made a new post about the subject. One person gave the wrong answer, another said the kickstart shaft was in the wrong position, still there was not enough detail.

Then I figured it out. Wasn't that hard, just had to sit down, look at the parts and move things around.

Here are the photos:

In the first picture note that the two gears on the kickstart shaft are meshed together. They should be separated when the engine is running and only meshed together when the kickstarter is being used to start the motor.

In the second picture, the arrow is pointing at one end of the kickstart spring, wrapped around a tang on the shaft. The other end of the kickstart spring is hooked to the engine cases.

The problem I had was because one end of the kickstart spring was not properly connected to that tang shown near the arrow. Once I hooked it onto the tang everything was okay. The two gears on the kickstart shaft separated and then they would mesh together when the shaft was pushed down.

Things are moving now. And I have two more motorcycles to work on. I hope to get this Honda back together soon!