The Neverending Tale of a '65 Superhawk Restoration

[cfloren]

So I've been lurking here on the site for quite some time now, and I decided that it's time to post my long-overdue introduction to my Superhawk. I've been inspired by a lot of the members of this board and it's time I contributed.

First of all, I didn't even know what a Superhawk was until after I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and wondered what kind of bike Pirsig rode. I was engrossed in the book and had to know the identity of the mystery bike (he never mentions the make or model)! I searched around and found this site (before the forum existed) and had an “ah-ha!” moment. From the one picture of Pirsig and his son on his Superhawk I started searching around, liked what I saw and really got the bug. I found a black '65 on the auction site locally and paid about $600 for it.

Didn't look so bad from far away over the internet!




It was not running, and hadn't in years. This was my first motorcycle and I had a lot to learn. It looked rough but I figured, “hey, I know my way around a VW, how different can this be?” Heh.

After getting it home and going through the carbs, cleaning out the tank and getting a battery, it ran! Not very well though. A new title from the DMV was its own adventure, loading the bike in my parents' minivan to take it in for VIN verification. The tank needed Kreeming (awful, I know) and one of the carbs was full of chalky corrosion. But I was getting somewhere.

As I learned more about the bike it became evident that someone had swapped in a CL77 engine at some point (starter blockoff plate, tach delete plate, etc). I rode the bike for a while this way and collected parts here and there. I bought the Bill Silver books and some parts from a Honda old-timer, Rick Bowers in Carson, CA. Rick, if you ever see this, thanks for the parts and tips.

This was all back in college, about 2003. That CL engine was a dog though...lots of smoke, no power and leaked all over the place. I found a complete CB77 engine allegedly in running condition for $150 and spent a few weekends swapping that in. After that the bike got me to and from classes fairly reliably, but I had a few scary moments, including blowing the front tire at about 35mph while making a right turn. It immediately went into a violent head-shake and scared the crap out of me. Somehow I managed not to dump the bike and got the front end settled down by damping the oscillations with my open palms. Turns out the front rim was bent, leading to a gradually growing bulge in the tire and eventual failure.


Engine swap in progress in UC Berkeley Supermileage Vehicle workshop. Not sure what I was doing with that power drill.




Occasionally though, the bike ran like a top and gave me immense enjoyment. I took a few great rides through the Berkeley hills with some friends, and really got fired up about rebuilding the bike to its former glory.


Hooning around without mufflers




Bear with me as I add pictures and keep the update going...

[Gunner_CAF]

Welcome!

I had a time at the DMV registering my bike also. The insisted it needed some safety number that should be on the frame or they couldn't register it. I told her I know every number on the bike and it doesn't have one. I said it's a 1966 motorcycle, there must be a way to do it. I had a copy of it's last registration in the 80s. She found the exception, they didn't putting these numbers on until the 70s. Then another person looked at it and said it needed to have a safety check from the State Patrol, then found an exception it didn't needed it if it was previously registered in the state, and it was. They finally took my money and gave me a tag. Restoring the bike was easier than the registration :)

It's a fun bike to ride. I took it on a 100+ mile ride last weekend.

I look forward to seeing more pictures!

Gunner

[Mike Mullins]

(that's what I tell the new pharmacy techs on their first day of work)
Good looking bike ! Neat pictures ! NEAT STORY ! These old bikes are a blast as you have found out. Whether you think so now, or not, you will have a lot to contribute to the forum also. Keep the pictures coming. ( I will be posting some pics of my 2nd 305 project soon.)
Mike Mullins
Demotte IN ( former national headquarters of the John Birch Society-anyone remember them ?)

[cfloren]

Thanks guys for the comments. I will be trying to catch up to where I am in the project today, which may take a while since I started it 4 years ago. Anyways back to our regularly scheduled program...

Fast forward to 2005. I've gotten my first full-time job and I'm out of school, moved down to the LA area. So here sits this lonely, rusty, forlorn looking Honda in my rented townhouse's garage in Lawndale. Of course I couldn't leave it together for long.

Before ripping into the bike though, I laid out a plan. I bought a cheap notebook and started writing out ideas. I got myself a copy of the Honda CB77 Parts Catalog, along with the official “Honda 250, 300” Shop Manual. The parts catalog is incredibly helpful, but the shop manual has some interesting “Engrish” translations and can be a bit tough to understand. Two other helpful books were “How to Set Up Your Motorcycle Workshop” by C. G. Masi, and “How To Restore Your Motorcycle” by Zimmerman and Hackett. I used these two to get tips and ideas mostly; I didn't treat them as guidebooks or bibles.

Here's a shot taken right before disassembly. It looks better than it really was though...




As shown here. Now you can get an idea for what I'm dealing with: a bike that was obviously stored outside for large portions of its life.




Check out those custom fork gaiters. Somebody spent some time making them fit. The fork covers were cut on both sides, and the gaiters were clamped on just above the cut. They actually fit very well. They must have leaked though, because the threaded collars (and fork lowers) were full of watery rusty oil.




The disassembly process took longer than I expected, mostly because I tried to take pictures of everything, and drew diagrams of anything that could be confusing later. Or easily forgotten, such as wiring harness routing, cable routing, fastener orientation, carb assembly order, engine case screw lengths shown in correct locations, etc. etc. ad nauseam. I tried to take as many pictures as possible to match my diagrams so I had more than one source for reassembly information in the future.

Here's an example shot from the steering stem / front fork assembly:




As I tore the bike down I realized that every single part needed attention of some kind. The whole bike was completely shot, and a lot of parts were obviously worn beyond their usable limit, or severely pitted. At this point the scope of the project became apparent and I realized what I was in for. Lots of time and dollars to spend...

[cfloren]

Sorry for the long delay in getting back to the story here. I've actually been working on the bike lately, which has been a great change of pace. It's been neglected for the past 2 years, which I'm not proud of. But hey, life gets in the way of these things.

Anyways, I disassembled the bike with the intentions of restoring it to stock, as close as I could. My intentions have changed a bit since then, but I'll get to that later.

I started removing the simplest parts from the bike: fuel tank, taillight, battery, carbs, exhaust, controls and so on.

One thing I found extremely helpful was keeping what I call a "bag list" of parts in my notebook. As I would take off a certain assembly (e.g. the carbs), I kept all the bits, hardware, brackets etc. together in one bag, and wrote the entire contents of each bag in my notebook. I wrote a number in sharpie pen on each bag, corresponding to the list. This way, if I found a bag three months later with a few mystery screws and a dingus or two, all I'd have to do was look up its number on the list and refresh my memory as to what those parts were from. Much easier than trying to find each and every component in the Honda parts book!

Some assorted shots from the teardown period:


Everything was coated in oxidation and rust. At least three coats of hand-rubbed rust.




I had no tach drive cable, so I covered up the opening in the drive housing with a blob of duct tape, secured with zip ties. I was a poor college student when the idea occurred to me...




Here's a closeup of the petcock, which was incorrect, ugly, and leaky. I never did find out what bike it was from, but I bought an NOS CB77 petcock just to spite this cruddy thing.




Now for the bike's finest feature: the "creative" toggle switch for ignition run/kill. It was "installed" by a previous owner; unfortunately I can't take the credit for this one. You can see here that the wiring harness was in pretty sad shape. The standard ignition switch was there, but the key was long gone. I never had a key for the bike when it was together.




Shot of the left exhaust and shifter mechanism. Oh boy, more rust...

[cfloren]

Both of my footpeg brackets were cracked. This one was the worst, with the rear exhaust mount ear broken off. How had the pipe been supported, you ask? Why, bailing wire of course.




Back when the bike was together (and I was trying in vain to keep it that way), one thing I could never figure out was why the chain adjusters never settled on the same alignment marks on each side, when the rear wheel was straight. When I took the bike apart I learned why: the swingarm was bent. So obviously, it had either been hit on one side, or dropped pretty hard in the past. It might be my imagination but I think the bend is visible in this photo; the left leg curves towards the center quite a bit.




The engine is a brick s***house. They really overbuilt these things. I was relieved when I got it up on the bench by myself in one piece. That's a sweet custom engine stand you see there, by the way. It worked.

[milwaukeephil]

You leaving us hanging here?