Nature's Wrath

Oh, MAAAAN....! 

Sometime in mid-July we got smacked with a huge storm that did a number on my project shed, where I house al those project bikes I need to get back on the road. I didn't notice the damage at first, because where it is is kind of out of the line of sight from my kitchen. But you see that big honkin' tree laying across the roof...? SOMEHOW that tree - which was very tall and overhung another shed in front of it - somehow that tree twisted in the winds we had rip through the area and came down on this shed. 

That tall tree had been hanging over the sheds for years, and I always suspected it would come down someday. Truth be told, I was rather glad it did come down, I just wish it had fallen the other way! Luckily it only crashed through the roof panels in between the joists, so replacing it wasn't all that hard, really. Call up some friends and lure them in with beer and burgers and it's amazing what you can get accomplished. 

Yeah, it Sucked, with a capital "S", but it was what it was. Nothing inside was damaged, thankfully, and we managed to finish the roof literally two minutes before the next storm hit! It doesn't look that high, but the roof crest is twelve to fifteen feet above the ground. Add in a chainsaw and sawdust and it can make for an exciting time crawling around a 9/12 roof pitch, or whatever it is.

But I was bothered because it took me away from the 1972 CB350 Four I have up on the slab in the lab. Last month I'd rebuilt the engine and gotten it back into the frame but ran across a problem with the top cover, which didn't seem to want to go on right. When I take apart anything with bolts in it, I make a diagram on a piece of cardboard where everything needs to go which saves a lot of time on reassembly, but this time around it wouldn't go into its proper holes, as seen here:  

The bolt indicated by the red line would match up with it's mounting holes, but the bolt indicated by the yellow line wouldn't catch and indeed was blocked by something. What that was I couldn't figure out, and puzzled over it until greater minds than mine pointed out that I had put the wrong bolt (in this case the acorn nut with the yellow circle on it) in the wrong spot - it needed to go in the front of the engine, along with another matching one, and once I got that figured out the cover went on smoothly.

Next I tried getting the electrical system wired up, but that had some inherent problems too. I kept blowing the main fuse from what I suspected was a bad ground somewhere. After a LOT of aggravating hunting and pecking and isolating and testing, including a moment of frustration when I pulled ALL the connections apart to track that bugger down, I finally narrowed it down to what I thought was a short somewhere in the harness. Since I had a new one laying around and am a big fan of scorched-earth tactics, I took out the old harness and put in the new one. And the fuse blew AGAIN! 

I hate electricity. I know, I know - ya gotta have it if you want the magic to happen - but it was a brand new wiring harness! I mean, "WTF"???

Turns out it was THIS little bugger right here, circled in yellow: the turn signal flasher relay! When I replaced the wiring harness, I reattached the green and black wires of the relay to the posts on the turn signal flasher, which was the way I found them originally on the old harness. Black wires on Honda motorcycles are 'Switched Hot' wires, and Green wires are Ground wires. So whenever I turned my key switch on, it of course went right to ground and fried my fuse! I studied the wiring diagram and noticed that the flasher relay DID have the gray wire attached to the relay as well, on the side, but the Black and Green wire were parallel to each other so I could see where the confusion was coming from. I switched out the Green wire with the Gray one and voila! Turn signals! 

If you look closely, you can see I have the black wire and a GRAY wire now attached to a new round-style winker relay, which works a lot better than the crusty OEM one. That gray wire is the hot turn signal wire for the flasher relay; I like to think the PO (Previous Owner) was driven nuts by that obscure problem - I know I was! 

But I got it all sorted and was happy to see all my dash lights light up - well, except for the Turn Signal light, which I believe is just the bulb. At least I hope so. 

In retrospect I think my original harness was okay, but that little hidden problem with the turn signal relay let my frustration get to me so I decided to replace it with a new one - but new is better anyway. I still have to replace the dash light.

The carbs are another matter entirely. With bikes this old, it's not rare to find all sorts of mayhem in the carburetors. Varnish, old dried fuel, stuck jets, and Yes, damage - although this little 350 Four carburetor is among the worst I've seen - they were pretty crapped up when I first opened them. This is after I ran them through my vapor blaster, you can see the damage.

The left one is missing one of the float posts, and the right one...well...time can do terrible things to pot metal...

I had NO idea how I was going to get on top of this problem. This is the Number Four carb, and CB350 Four carburetors aren't just lying about. I did however have another 'donor' carb that I was using for spare parts, so it became a case of cobbling together a full set. Which I did.

Wasn't easy; This bike is very similar to the CB500 and CB550, just smaller.

It passed the clear-tube test, which I was happy to see - no leaks or overflows either! 

But it is smaller; and smaller means 'tighter'. And tighter means an afternoon of expletives...especially when it comes to putting said carbs into the bike - but I got it! 

In my preoccupation with trying to get the carbs back in though I inadvertently neglected to put the manifold bands on it. Be advised that the air box - that black plastic thingy you can see on the right there - is an absolute PITA to put in, because in order to DO it, you have to take out the electrical panel and the battery box! Yeah, it sucked a bit.