Great to have such a forum, I'm just passing through

[gpzkqt]

I have just gone through a '66 CA77 as a side project. It's an interesting bike and I know it's significance to Honda and motorcycling. I'm pretty solid on bike work but for specific questions this forum is a nice resource so thanks.

This one was neglected, dirty, and needed some proper attention. I gave it a major service plus more. It's now running umm, like a Honda. It starts on the button and purrs. One of the best vintage runners I've done up, and it's a long list.

The carb slide was stuck from varnish over the years, so I used my method of a bucket of carb dip vibrating away in my BIG ultrasonic. Since I'm in CA the dip isn't as good but the ultrasonic does the trick. It carburets perfectly now. I checked the jets and they are stock. The air filter is a K&N type, not original. It doesn't seem to care. I didn't need a carb kit, it's so simple. On the float needle and seat, I always have done well with a Q-tip in my drill loaded with Mothers polish. No leaks.

I put on fresh proper metric diameter hoses, but wrong petcock on it sucks, routing was a pain.

I set the point gap and timing, and checked out all the wiring, fixed some stuff and put in LED instrument/neutral bulbs, plus I modified the headlight for an H4 LED. Very nice. Changed oil, set the valve lash, put in a new battery and sorted the ugly aftermarket turn signals - bad flasher and terrible wiring. Lots of other little fixes, missing E clip on kick start, various wrong and botched threads that I fixed with inserts and proper era JIS screws.

After the valve adjustment, the compression registered at around 155 on both cylinders, with the engine warm but not hot. No smoke, seems happy.

I also took a look at the switchgear contact, cleaned and measured voltage/loss. No parasitic loss and the sub $40 'Powerstar' battery I got has 130 CCA and starts the bike with ease. I never have problems with such batteries, I run 210 CCA ones on my '83 GS1100E's and get 4 years or so out of them. Run an inductive ammeter and keep an eye on it.

The horn was feeble so I disassembled, dressed the points, cleaned. Wow, it's a loud one! I also tried my hand at reshaping the badly bent brake lever. Worked great, pic below.

The rear footpegs bothered me with the sag (especially if you had to kick start) so I MacGyvered them with zip ties behind the spacer to add some tension. That old rubber doesn't have the spring in it's step any more.

The brakes were terrible and still aren't great, but I did my best to improve them. The speedo cable shredded itself on a ride and I have another coming soon, last thing to fix.

It's interesting to compare the Honda to my ground-up restoration of a '66 Norton N15CS. So different. The Honda is calm, friendly, set and forget reliable, long term happiness. The Norton is rather like a fickle but hot mistress (don't quote me). One thing that I found interesting is they are both 360-degree twins. I could write a thesis, but enough's enough.

Here are a couple pics. It's not a beauty queen but hey, it's a classic and I like to get old stuff working well. And it does.

Pic 1; Can we be friends?


Pic 2: Low beam LED


Pic 3 & 4: Headlight mod




Pic 5: Brake lever fix. Note the sagging rear pegs, which I have now fixed so they stand at attention.

[Muddy]

Vey nice job indeed, well done. The "tame" old girl looks great. Interested to hear what you did with the front brake and if it improved performance. These bike have pretty notoriously poor front brakes and anything that can be done to improve them is beneficial.

Thanks.

[gpzkqt]

Thanks. I just quickly sanded the pads and the drums, and cleaned it well. There was ingress of grease past the seal due to overzealous use of grease gun (my guess anyway, the seal seems OK). They are noticeably better but not great.

[Muddy]

... but not great.

Yes, I gotta do some investigation to try and improve mine, they leave a lot to be desired.

[sky.fred]

Nice bike... all that's left is to put on the original indicators to make it perfect.
As for the brakes, I'm afraid there's not much to be done. Honda brakes from this era aren't very efficient, and while it's possible to improve them a little, they'll never make competition brakes.
I've fitted soft shoe brake (I'm not sure of my translation) instead of the original and there's a slight improvement, but it still doesn't make for convincing braking.
One possibility would be to fit a longer arm brake or a double cam, but I have one on another Honda and those aren't exceptionally effective.

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=7643334&p=105406&h ... ke#p105406

[gpzkqt]

Thanks,

I found the reproduction turn signals and like them and they seem very reasonably priced on eBay - but the owner doesn't seem interested. He's just going to sell the bike. I wonder if he'll change his mind once he sees and rides it though. I fixed the bike up a lot for way too little $. I do it as a side hobby and my labor's probably $5 an hour.

On the brakes, I can see they are not making 100% contact, so they could benefit from 'arc-ing', or 'arching' as some say. On old VWs I used to get it done, matching the arc of the shoe to the drum made a big improvement. I can see these pads made pretty good contact but not 100%. I can do by hand with sandpaper glued temporarily inside the drum,working side out I will get the speedometer cable today and will have the front wheel off due to the nasty routing of the cable. Maybe I will feel energetic.

On my '66 Norton N15CS and 2 '82 GS1100Es I use 'soft' organic pads (Ferodo). A lot of people think sintered metallic is the way to go, but you lose feel and stopping power unless you are really pushing the bike hard or racing.

[Tim Allman]

I'm curious about the LED H4. How well does it work as a headlight? Is the charging system able to keep up when it's in use?