Ready to ride

There were a few things to sort out after the engine started up in July.

1. The starter and the headlight weren't working. Both of those are connected via the handlebar switch. I took the switch apart, cleaned it up and put it back together. Still no go. Splurged and bought a new switch (costs about $100). That fixed the headlight problem but still the starter wasn't working.
2. The left side crank seal was leaking! Why did this happen? It didn't leak before the engine came apart! I am guessing that the time the crank was out of the engine (about six months) caused it to leak. The seal was leaking right where it contacts the crank. If it were leaking around the crankcase joint it might have been possible to seal it up with permatex or something.

Changing the crank seal usually involves splitting the crankcases. Yeah I could do it in maybe an 8 hour day (with all the practice I had working on the motor this year) but I would rather not.

Looking at the SOHC4.net forum, some members described removing the seal and installing a new one with the motor intact. Yesterday I gave it a try.

By the way, I did not change the seals when I initially split the engine because I've never seen one leak and I didn't have a stator puller. Finding a stator puller turned out to be pretty easy, just finding the right size bolt at a hardware store (16mm x 1.5 pitch). It cost about $6 bucks.

After removing the stator I pried the old seal out (be careful not to scratch the crankshaft). I hear there are special tools for pulling seals, next time I'll buy one. Then I used a rubber mallet and a piece of wood to slowly and evenly push the new seal into place. Oh, by the way the seal has a little ridge on it. I trimmed it off with a sharp knife as it seemed the seal would never go in with the ridge intact.

Yesterday I rode the bike a few miles and it looks like the leak is gone! It is certainly better than it was before the fix. The first time I started and rode the Honda I came home and had oil on my left shoe.

Of course another problem suddenly popped up. The headlight, which had worked when I installed the new handlebar switch, suddenly stopped working on the low beam. Funny, as I was riding the low beam started working again and then when I got home it stopped. I wondered if it was the juice in the battery, but the high beam worked consistently.

I had a spare halogen headlight in storage. Pulled it out, hooked it up and both the low and high beam worked. So the problem was the 34 year old headlight, which went into the trash and was replaced with a halogen unit. I hope the charging system can support this 55w low / 60w high beam bulb.

Okay, that leaves the starter to fix. Last month I checked the solenoid and it worked. The starter itself works, I can arc the two leads on top of the solenoid and turn the motor over. And the handlebar switch is new. So what's the problem? I'm not sure but we have all those other things tackled, I'll get the starter going by tracing the wiring or if worse comes to worse running new wires along the harness.

One more thing to remember. When I rode the CB550F yesterday the idle was a little rough and there was some backfiring on trailing throttle. I adjusted the mixture screws on the sides of the carbs and set them to 1 1/4 turns out (about 1/2 turn in from the previous settings) which richens up the mixture a bit. The bike immediately idled better. I'll take it out for another road test when the rain stops.