1961 CB72 Project

[G-Man]

Off to see a good friend this morning to swap some Honda parts. He has already found me a nice spare pair of round bowl power jet carb bodies and has a surplus rear brake cable complete with lubricator in black.

That will complete the set of cables I have been looking for.

Hopefully there will be a chance to get the crank pressed up this afternoon, and then work can start on putting this little puzzle back together.




G

[G-Man]

Such are plans and good intentions. Last night I had the beginnings of a toothache after biting on something hard. I went up and did the swap of my junk for my friend's treasure and on the way back discovered that my tooth problems were not going to go away and as I have a trip to the US next week, I could not shrug it off. My crank fettling afternoon was spent at the dentist. There was a silver lining though. I got a call from the zinc platers who are just down the road from the dentist and I was able to comfort myself with some shiny stuff....

In the horde was a selection of speedo casings. I needed a couple for Alan's and my early speedos but I threw in a few extras for later projects for good measure. Even th early ones have subtle differences so you have to be careful.



When I got home I was able to sort everything out. Only a small selection was for the '61 project but it came up looking pretty nice.



I was pleased to see that the speedo spring came up nicely and my home-made damper plate looked as good as the genuine Honda article that I borrowed from Alan.



And my spoils from the morning's barter session were these two cables in black. Th speedo cable is a later NOS one but the back brake is a proper early CB72 type with lubricator. It has been on a racing bike for a while and I will have to renew the fittings but it's all there.



Just trying to take my mind off a fading pain from my emergency dental work now....

G

[Seadog]

Glad it all worked out - including the dental emergency. Your parts came out great. It makes me want to try a bit of zinc plating.

[malcolmgb]

Do you use Nun Street for that Graham?

[G-Man]

Malcolm

No this was Derby Plating. I've used both and prefer the colour that Derby Plating achieve. The Nunn Street guys always leave the wires on the parts and it takes ages to 'un knit' everything.

G

[G-Man]

I had a call from Jerry yesterday evening and, among other things, he suggested that my thin bushes might be a little too thin. I had already ordered tools to open the rod end a little so I'm going to look into that. In fact his real opinion was that I chuck these rods away and get some fresh ones. I'm going to ponder that but it would be nice to find out if this is a suitable mod for a bike that gets nowhere near the 13,500 rpm that Jerry's race bikes are used to.

Also he pointed out that my aluminium plugs were a little too tight. I rushed that job a little so I shall make a couple more and re-do the plugging.

Thanks Jerry. Your guidance, and more importantly the careful reasoning behind it, is very important. In my 35 years as an Engineer in the Railroad industry the one thing I have learned is that "we have always done it like that" is not a truly valid reason for continuing a practice in light of real information......

Thanks again.....

G

[G-Man]

Well I drilled and tapped those ugly gallery plugs and pulled them back out. This time, I looked around in my discarded bits and found the originals that I pulled out a while back.

The old plugs were measured and then the holes to the best of my abilities.



I made two more after measuring the gallery bore and the first one pressed in nicely. The second one fell right in the hole without persuasion. Th two plugs were made from the same piece of turned bar so one of the holes must've been bigger than the other.



Back to the lathe and a slightly larger plug was made and driven in to the 'larger' hole. You cannot take anything for granted......

G