honda305.com Forum

Unless you know the people at that shop and their work very well, I wouldn't take the head/valves to them. I have heard and seen far too many horror stories about bike shops, especially dealers, doing bad work, even damaging engine parts, to trust them just because they are in business.

I tried to find a place to work on it and nobody would take it. The local Honda dealer referred me to someone that said they dont like working on anything this old. I'm doing it myself now.

Valves are cleaned up, re-seated with valve grinding compound and reinstalled without ever having removed the rockers or cam. Since this whole tear-down appears to have been a waste of time there doesnt seem to be a point in completely disassembling it. The cylinder walls have also now been deglazed and are ready for the pistons. Debating whether or not to replace the rings. The gap where the 2 ends meet when installed in the cylinder is .7mm, which I think is ok? Next step is to order gaskets and fix the carb float.

Work has slowed down lately due to some distractions with equipment. I was able to get the valves and cylinders ready and then decided to bead blast everything before reassembly. This meant buying a blast cabinet and a bigger compressor than I had. The compressor turned out to be a project in itself. I bought a used 80 gal 5hp that was supposed to work but was missing the supply pipe between the tank and the pump. After fabricating that pipe the pump would not fill the tank to more than 30lbs. Turned out to be bad gaskets and I think maybe rings as well. Unlike the Honda, the rings on the compressor are passing a lot of oil on one side. Anyway, the guy that I bought it from felt bad about the whole thing and has stood behind it better than any store would have on a new one. He showed up at my house with an Ingersoll Rand T30 3 phase, 2 stage. I dont have 3 phase power so the motors had to be switched out. He worked for several hours to get everything running correctly and then left me both compressors. $400 for both! I did manage to get some of the blasting done and am now ready to reassemble the top end. I then plan to blast the bottom end. It wont fit in my cabinet assembled and I dont want to risk getting blast media in the crank case so it seems safer to blast it outside in one piece.

More pics

Its all back together and still running too rich. I set the float level to about 27mm (.5 more than its supposed to be, which should tend toward too lean?) The needle valve is set at its highest slot and all the original jets are being used...none from the kit. It runs great for about 15 minutes until it fouls the plugs. This is mentioned as a common issue with these engines in the Bill Silver manuals so I guess I'm not dealing with anything unusual.

The compression is too low on both sides but seems to be rising as it breaks in. Hopefully this will continue to at least what it was before I started working on it.

when you say the needle is at it highest slot do you mean it is as far down as it will go?