Abandoned Honda 400EX saved after sitting for DECADES in pieces

just get ready to film this stuff [Music] oh all right like a quick bathroom break [Music] my wrench earlier this year i got a call from a friend offering me a honda 400 ex we estimate that it's been sitting in a barn in this condition since the early 2000s the previous owner never even saw this quad run this was inherited in a lot of machines and just kind of kicked to the side and sat in the back of the barn for decades now the condition that i received this thing in is partially torn down i have no idea what's going on with the bottom end the top end was entirely missing from this thing so will we be able to get this thing running uh probably will it be easy probably not let's get into it all right now first things first let's get a look at this thing and see what we're working with at least it rolls nice let's see if it goes in gear that's always a good sign take these plastics off so we can see oh that's nice all right now we actually got a little bit of a head start on this thing got brand new tires on here compliments of lionparts.com they saw i was working with some dry rotted scat and they decided to send me these brand new itp whole shot gmcc tires i've never run these before i rode them on pete hager's raptor and i really liked them but i've never had them on a personal quad they're kind of like narrow and balloonish looking but the way they were on pizza i really liked them so i think they're going to be great for this build and the other thing i did is i swapped out the bars because they were bent and the clutch lever had the uh the clunky parking brake and stuff on there got rid of that the only other thing that i did is i pulled the cylinder off it came with no head there was no head on it was just a cylinder and a piston i pulled that off just that i can inspect the rod and everything and it turns out the cylinder the sleeve uh was dropping in the cylinder so instead of repairing that i just got a whole new kit we're gonna do an entirely new top end but there was no head on it there was no gas tank i had to buy the gas tank i got that on ebay for like 50 bucks the rest of it though as far as i can remember i haven't touched anything it doesn't look too bad this is a 99 there's a good amount of aftermarket stuff on it the swingarm it's definitely after market and it's definitely longer than stock we got burguard a arms a lot of brigard stuff on here these are old school probably guess they're plus two plus ones some uh custom voltage look at this one you can see that's that's the oem bowl i think i have some of these oem bolts so i'll probably swap that out just to clean up the look a little bit make everything match it's got works triple rate shocks and i think these are in really good shape too the suspension feels good i was jumping up and down right here and uh those i think those shocks are actually not i don't say they're fairly new but they don't think they have much time on them i have no idea what all this is uh i'm sure all that'll be fine i don't know if this is some kind of custom wiring for headlights i'll probably just delete all of that stuff this is electron carburetor that it came with thing looks old as dirt but i think it works it just needs to be cleaned really well not going to be running that i don't know what the heck is up with this peg this is some kind of weird aftermarket peg if you look at this side this one's oem and then over here like i just don't know what's going on it's lower it almost looks like it was like like custom made maybe i don't know but i got some replacement oem pegs there was no battery no battery tray no battery strap all that stuff is missing we have a custom tail light doesn't look horrible if it works we'll probably rock it it's got an extended axle probably plus two plus four got the anti-fade back here good stuff it's just been sitting forever i don't know and everything actually feels pretty tight the steering even feels tight the stem is slightly bent so i'm gonna see if i can find a machine shop that straightens boat props and we'll see if we can straighten that stem out because that's a nice bergaard probably like plus two stem or something i'd like to reuse that it's definitely not worth getting rid of plastics are in fairly good shape got some power med guards up here i don't know if i'll run those maybe maybe not and then the front plastics these look really thrashed but i don't think they're as bad as they look so it's the worst of it right here where it's like ripped but when that goes together like that i'm pretty sure that this quad tech hood will cover that and it won't really be a problem this is a really rare piece right here you don't see these things anymore man quad tech carbon fiber hood it's in good shape too it's got a couple scratches and stuff on it but we take off that burguard sticker clean it up put some sc1 on there and that's going to look pretty new bottom end feels good the rod is nice and tight the rod looks good bottom end looks good we'll probably flush it a few times i'm not planning on taking this apart there's a couple things on here i want to swap out like up here you can see somebody put these rinky dink uh washers and bolts up there hopefully they're not like quarter 20s that are cross threaded in there i don't know as long as the bottom end feels tight i don't really think it's necessary to pull that apart this isn't going to be like a complete restoration or anything like that this is basically to make everything function get all the bearings tight just make it run like an absolute ace and just will make it look good it's not going to look like crap but it's not going to be like a complete do everything up so just keep that in mind during this video guys all right now i looked this thing over really thoroughly i think and uh i think i have all the parts ordered i ordered them a little while ago and i tried to collect everything so that we can get this thing completely together and running all in this video that's my goal so i'm staring at the box right here i'm gonna pull this thing out and we're gonna get all the parts out of here and i'll show you what we have [Music] all right so i've got all of our parts laid out here i think we have everything that we need to finish this project all in one shot crossing my fingers here i don't know so we might as well just get started right here i'll just kind of go over everything that i got this is a hot cam stage three just because it's stage three doesn't mean it's better than stage two stage three is higher rpm stage two would be mid-range around the stage two and the last 400 x loved it uh we're gonna see if the stage three gets us a little bit better performance then i have a je 11 to one piston this is an 88 millimeter making it a 426 man is she sweet pistons really are just cool man i say it every single time it's a shame that you can't see them can you imagine if the cylinder was clear and then it didn't get dark from all the carbon buildup and you could just see the piston all the time that would be freaking sweet i felt like it was more cost effective to use a a no-name brand cylinder so i ran this in the 400 ex build the 416. we beat the crap out of that thing i sold it to a subscriber he's been beating the crap out of it and still i don't think he's had any issues with it so i just don't see a problem running one of these it's more cost effective and it was way quicker than fixing the oem one so that's what we're going with it is the 88 millimeter to match the je piston i had a new cam cover there of course we got our head this uh totally missing piece so bp racing atv was kind enough to send us this one got some brand new gaskets from bp racing atv um a new clutch cable from tusk and we got an hmf exhaust there was no exhaust on this thing so now we got a brand new hmf thank you to lionparts.com for sending this thing i've always liked hmf i think they sound really good and they make good performance as well finishing up the engine parts we have a tusk competition clutch kit thank you rocky mountain atv also got a tusk heavy duty spring kit and then i ordered a stainless steel bolt kit from alloy bolts just for the engine i have heavy duty studs from bp racing atv we got cable white valves i've got a new timing chain oh the couple white valves are up there there's that rebuild kit for the head and i think that's pretty much all the engine parts then we have up here is a new carburetor i was going to do a 37 millimeter fcr style carb and just for simplicity i decided to go with oem this is a replica carburetor it looks really good though this is from zoom zoom parts and supposedly it takes the oem jets and works really well so that's going to keep things simple and of course we've got the ap3 red lines that we're going to put on there that's going to make it match and just look really trick then this is the battery this was the uh this is the cheapest well actually it wasn't the cheapest battery it was the quickest battery the quickest battery i could find uh this was on amazon prime i got it one day i ordered this yesterday mighty max battery you know it's good and plus the bike on here is red so it's made for honda then i have a whole bunch of just miscellaneous honda parts i got a new spark plug in there i went over everything you can see a strap for the tank i just kind of went over everything on the bike and tried to be as prepared as possible i put the tank out here because i had to buy that that was an ebay part uh that is the top motor mount part battery strap battery box those are some oem pegs that i bought off of ebay some used ones we'll replace that weird janky one uh some asv levers i'm not sure if we're gonna run those or not but they're so badass i feel like we have to and then i have the under tank um i guess splash guard slash heat shield that was missing as well and then i've got an ac new old stock bumper picked that up off of ebay there was no bumper on this quad you got to have a bumper and i think that'll look pretty trick and then last but not least i had my graphics made so in the grape ape video i got a bunch of comments people saying who made your graphics all that stuff so i designed my graphics myself i make it in photoshop in illustrator and then agmx prints them but a lot of people were asking about like the design uh that's that's me man so i designed my graphics this is my new logo up here see i still got the gear in the background tried to like modernize it i don't know you guys let me know in the comment section below what you think of that but i thought this would be a good project to kind of introduce that logo so my plan of action is to first get the machine running we'll put the top end on there make sure that everything's cool with the bottom end get the new clutch in there um set up all the cables and whatnot make sure the wire harness all that stuff is okay and i just want to make sure that we have a running machine here because if it's not we might have to pull the bottom end and do all that bs and um then we'll move on to all the odds and ends you know making it actually nice taking care of you know the aesthetics and stuff putting the graphics and stuff on there shouldn't be really that bad of a project so i say we just hop right into it before i do that though if you guys are enjoying this video please give me a thumbs up and consider hitting that subscribe button i love all you guys all right let's get to it oh this is a little scary i don't know if you guys can see i can see liquid down there i hope it's oil because this thing sat outside for a little bit it actually looks okay let's drain it and see what comes out [Music] all right now i drained the oil tank as well and that bolt was just as stuck as the one on the engine the engine oil is like this almost like tacky texture it's kind of weird but anyways i want to flush it so what i'm going to do is use some of this 15 weight 4d oil and the reason i chose this oil is because it says performance on it actually the reason i chose this is because it's been in the shed for like five years or so and i'm probably never going to use it so for this purpose at least it will help flush out whatever kind of oil has been sitting in there for the last two decades so i'm going to put it through the oil tank try to get that running through the oil line and i'll also just dump a little bit right into the crank case and just kind of flush it out a little bit now ideally if i had kerosene that would work really well but i don't have any right now well our oil lines must be clogged because this has a quart and a half of oil in it and i just checked with the dipstick it's nice and full and well you guys won't be able to see in there but there is no oil in that crank case and i don't think there's any oil in the clutch case either so i'll drain that out and i guess we'll have to pull the oil lines off and blow those out make sure that they're flowing you can see they go right into the side of the clutch cover right here this lower one should be feeding right into the clutch cover and then there are ports that go into the center cases and there is just there's nothing in there you can see down to the bottom of the cases so not a big deal we have to take off the clutch cover anyways because we want to switch out that clutch with a competition clutch and i want to see what's in there too maybe we got like a hints and basket or something who knows so there's the oil from the tank flushing it so that's actually the fresh oil you can see all the grime that came out with it said i'd show you that flush really works and it looks like the oil coming out is clear now definitely needed to be flush we'll do the same thing with the crankcase once we get those lines cleaned up all right let's get this clutch cover off first thing we'll do is take off the brake so that's not in the way take the brake pedal off anyways [Music] oh dry looks pretty dirty not as bad as i thought it would be though oh [Music] wow [Music] that's really stuck on there oh man i can see the gasket behind it it's going to be a lot of fun cleaning that off really doesn't look that bad this actually looks really good everything's pretty clean there's like a little thin layer of sludge on the bottom there i'm sure once we heat this thing up with oil a couple times that'll all work its way through the system we can flush that out i don't see any broken gears uh nothing in the channels or anything like broken um you know gears off of our transmission or anything the clutch looks really good can't really tell without pulling apart but you can see the thickness of the fibers so we're gonna pull that off but i really don't think we're gonna have any problems and i also want to replace the timing chain too so we'll go in there pull that stuff out inspect it swap out the chain swap out the clutch i had to show this to you guys this is either all oem and has never been touched or somebody replaced all these components so you can see the little crush mark right there that's an oem thing usually there's multiple like ripples in this bolt because it's been crushed multiple times where it's just jimmied up like this shaft doesn't even have any marks in it either this is all brand new components somebody went here went in here replaced it or this is original and it's just super low hours that's actually what i'm going to say i'm going to lean towards because the rest of the i mean there's no boot rub or anything on here i think this is just a really low hour machine also these clutch fibers are oem i'm 99 sure those are oem and they have tons of life left so they could just be a brand new oem parts that were replaced i just doubt it i have a feeling this is all oem so i'm gonna go ahead and tear this apart [Music] oh it's actually not that bad all right guys just have a look at what we have here this stuff is in really good shape this clutch cover cleaned up really nice you think that looks good wait till you see the underside literally brand new uh i cleaned the gasket material off and i mean it came off i'm not gonna say easy but uh just took a razor and very gently you don't wanna score it it came up pretty easily probably got the whole thing off in like two three minutes which is that's quick man if you take off gaskets it's always a pain in the ass and then um real quick hit it on the surfacing plate over there that's just a perfectly flat piece of granite with i think that is 240 grit on there right now i usually use 240 to 320. but yeah so i cleaned this up that cleaned up super nice while we're talking about surfacing i'll show you got the gasket material off of the case side also also came off fairly easy all i used was a razor blade on that i don't think we have to touch that any further flushed the crank case again and i took the bottom hose off of the oil tank and i flushed this out this flows nice and good now so we shouldn't have any issues with oil flow i didn't want to have to worry about that because last thing we need is a quad with no oil even though if any quad can run without oil it's a 400 ex so back to these parts everything is in really good condition we got the oil pump right here flush that out everything works nice and good in that the clutch basket looks good there is a small amount of grooving it's not bad though you can feel it to the touch just a little bit i'm going to leave it i don't really think we're going to have any problems the inner hub looks really good all of our surfaces are nice and smooth you can't feel any grooves or nothing i have a feeling this is going to be a very smooth uh perfectly functioning clutch and you guys i don't know if i'm gonna get beat up for this or not but these plates are in such good shape i think i'm gonna put them back in there i think it would be a waste to throw these out i mean i'm gonna say this is like 90 if not more i'm gonna guess it was recently replaced because uh i was gonna say super low hour but i don't think you'd have grooves like that for a super low hour i think this is still like a fairly low hour machine but that's probably just a new oem clutch i really the biggest reason i want to use it is because it's oem the oem clutches are really good now what we'll do is we'll just switch out the springs which these are oem also they have the yellow paint on them washed off in the parts washer just going to switch that out with the um high performance tusk springs just so we get a little bit more pressure because we're going to the 426 kit chain slides look okay all of our gears look good got all our bolts cleaned up and lined up uh actually the timing chain what is that wow i was about to say the timing chain was good check this out i literally just found this broken that probably would have caused an issue probably would have failed eventually i'm really glad i saw that i mean i was going to replace it anyways but this is like one of those cheap insurance items putting a timing chain on it's just it makes sense if you're on an engine to switch it out so that's going to get replaced i guess that wasn't in as good of condition as i was about to say it was and the rest of this stuff is just like odds and ends but yeah so that should all go together really nice and easy before i put that stuff on i'm gonna go ahead and switch out these two mickey mouse looking bolts that just looks like crap and i also want to take off the air filter clean it now's a good time to do that so that it has time to dry while we're doing all this work this can be interesting and fun at times to see what's going on in an air filter some people just literally it's like they never clean their air filters and then they wonder why their quads don't run right [Music] it's not looking that bad though this just looks dirty but otherwise i mean the nice thing about k n's is you can clean them pretty much no matter what and reuse them it's a real k n it's not a knockoff that's good this thing is crusty man i wonder if this dude ever cleaned this stuff this is definitely clogged it doesn't look horrible uh just looking at it but you can it's definitely this thing is caked with dirt i'll clean this thing out and uh it should function like brand new all right let's get these two mickey mouse bolts off wow that's not good i see why they had that big ass washer on there now the one leg is busted off i really hope this isn't like a quarter 20 or something that they just cross threaded in here because people do stuff like that man weird did this break i don't even know is this just a really short bowl it's broken [Applause] now that right there that is magnificent must have been cross threaded or somebody threw some jb weld in there oh man that sucks at least this one over here is good there's a part of me that just wants to repair the one leg and use one bolt but we got to drill it and we got to fix it all right i'll have to repair that hole but before i do that let's see if our starter is even any good um before we attempt to save this thing because if it might not even work so i've got a jumper box here i'm gonna connect one down here the negative then we're just going to touch the positive up here all right starter is good now you can get after market starters really cheap like 40 50 bucks i would imagine i didn't even without even looking especially 400 ex might even be cheaper but i really like to keep oem stuff this is the oem starter so realistically this back post there's not really any up or down stress that's going to be on it because this thing slides out um really that's really the only pressure is going to be stopping is forced this way so if i oh god you guys are going to kill me if i jb weld this like that the jb weld barely even has to do anything this basically this could pop this could really be put into place with no um epoxy and it would still hold the starter in place because it's just stopping it from pulling out this way so i'm going to clean this up really good put some jb weld on there and honestly i don't think that's ever going to be an issue i'm guessing that this broke probably it was removed at some point in time and it was dropped and that it probably just hit just right and snapped it right off so i don't think it's worth getting rid of the starter might as well just like i said jb weld uh yeah so we'll clean this thing up since it works and uh i'll jb weld that then i'll get on to fixing up stupid bolt hole i love strip bolt holes [Music] [Music] okay so that little thread stunt that we just did there that you guys watched and took about 15 seconds well that was about an hour and a half to get that damn thing out i didn't even get it out it was so seized in there i ended up i tried drilling it then i broke a drill bit if you guys have ever done that before that's a nightmare and i mean i don't know if it was like a hardened bolt or what because leading up to that i just could not get the damn thing out i ended up having to use a burr and like grinding out the entire thing and then i rethreaded it but it's good to go now but man what freaking nightmare so i did a couple other things too i'm gonna be about to do the clutch side we're just gonna get that all together get the bottom end entirely done i took the parking brake off because i don't even know why people put those on like or leave them on especially it's a 99 like you kidding me i couldn't believe that i think it's still on there i had this parking brake block off that was actually from the 250r when i bought it but it fits a 400dx it just cleans up the back really nice got rid of some of the cables and stuff that we're not using that electron carburetor took that off this is all cleaned and greased up we're not greased up but uh you know oiled up i put um our rockers and everything in built the cam cover surface that all right let's set up our primary drive gear and our new timing chain this is a super heavy duty timing chain from bp racing so this is the new one right see how thick that is then check out the old one the old junky mickey mouse oem one junk so this is literally i would say double the strength it's got to be i mean it's like double the thickness there we go now we're going to use our tusk clutch holding tool to hold the inner hub while we tighten this thing up i love this tool i'll have this linked in the description below honestly it's worth buying even if you're only doing one engine it's like 10 bucks and it enables you to torque this down to the correct tightening torque it's just it's a great tool to have and if you're doing engines even like frequent even infrequently but just sort of i mean dude it's just once you have it you can't live without it once one tool i'm just gonna get that close one tool does all motors you don't have to get like one of those custom clutch discs that holds like the inner and outer hub for each and every machine it just makes sense to have in my opinion this goes to 80 foot pounds there we go so easy to use oh my god i can't believe mike's putting a used clutch in oh i'm gonna leave a comment tell him what an idiot he is that'll show him well i just realized that i completely forgot to put my cam chain slider on which goes behind the clutch assembly so that's awesome basically it's just a little bolt and a spacer and it holds this in place but you have to do it before you put the clutch assembly on so i'm just gonna go ahead and do that off camera real quick all right let's get the cover on we're gonna put our dowel pins in place put a little bit of anti-seize on there it's just kind of like a courtesy thing for the next guy that comes and takes this engine apart so he's not like you know cursing and swearing when these things are seized now if you know who's getting this quad next and you don't like them this is definitely a step that you would want to skip [Music] [Music] this this is just not my day i forgot to put the oil pump gear in okay so that is finally all good to go i'll probably find out that there's some critical component missing after i get everything else together but that's okay so i got all the stainless steel hardware there i also came over here and just switched out all of our hardware so that it matches we've got stainless steel over here i cleaned up i took the gasket off and then cleaned up the surface up here uh cleaned up the dowels and everything so we're going to go ahead and put the piston and the cylinder on all right let's go ahead and put our piston on a little bit of assembly lube to put in there got our je 11 to 1 high compression piston all right now we'll put our piston clip in we've got eye protection on because i just did this the other day with the yz125 and it flew out and literally almost hit me directly in the eye so i mean it might be a good idea maybe to wear eye protection and like always you want to make sure this is completely clipped in the groove and you usually want the opening at the bottom or the top put a fresh gasket in place before you put your cylinder on i'm gonna throw some lube in there i'm actually using beno two-stroke oil it'll work just fine trust me plus it'll smell really good you want to make sure you check your ring gap and everything before you put your cylinder on i've already gone ahead and done that don't all right piston is good to go you can see i surfaced this i surfaced everything that i possibly could even though these are new parts it's just a good habit to get into if you've got a surfacing block why not that piston looks freaking sweet though now before we put the head on i want to do a little bit of work to it so this was sent to me by bp racing atv and this is actually a blem i don't know if this was dropped or what the deal was with it but they didn't actually completely finish this steve had told me about it and i was like dude just send it i'll clean it up it's no problem at all so they didn't want to put this one on the shelf to sell to a right to like a regular customer uh but for me it's perfect this was ported now like i said it's not uh entirely finished so i'm going to go ahead and finish it you can see honestly it's it's very good work show you the intake over here it's got a little bit of a texture to it but it's very smooth some people like to make it a little bit smoother i'm going to leave my intake it's it's really not that rough you can barely feel it with your finger it kind of just looks rough they took down the valve guides which i would have done anyways and then there's a little bit of a ridge on these valve seats i like these to be really smooth i can i mean this stuff you can't really see unless you feel it but there's just a tiny little little bit of a ridge in there around the edge i'm going to clean all that up i like that to be ultra smooth both sides need it and then i'm going to polish up the exhaust side a little bit i like to make those a little bit shinier one other thing is this intake boot i actually didn't have this part they had this on amazon for one day shipping so this thing will bolt on and believe it or not it's actually it's pretty damn close i already have had it bolted on there there's a very small ridge there's little bumps and stuff realistically for for a stock unit nobody would even notice i would say these aftermarket i guess this is like a chinese one these are actually pretty decent but we're going to bolt this on and then i'll go in there with my porting tool and i'm going to make sure that the transition from this intake boot into the actual intake of the cylinder head is super smooth so i'm going to go ahead and do that now [Music] i ended up doing quite a bit of work on this head i went real smooth in here no ridges whatsoever you know this is again this is kind of stuff that it's tough like you guys really can't appreciate it without actually seeing what it feels like i'm gonna have to get a flow bench to show the difference i took a pretty good amount out of here show you guys from this angle i wish the camera would really focus in there but that should flow really good and then on this side i left the texture for the intake and this intake boot all the transitions are nice and smooth there used to be ridges and stuff and i also board quite a bit out of this boot even though the opening wasn't that far off i opened that up but the boot was a little bit restrictive so i kind of opened and tapered the entire thing you can't just have an abrupt opening and then all of a sudden it gets smaller i mean you can do that but it's not going to be performance wise it's not going to be optimal so you have to taper it which is what i did so i just tapered the whole thing you know this should perform really well so our head is pretty much in order i'm going to go ahead put the kibble white valves in i've got kibble white springs put those in too i got some kibble white keepers it's just uh it's going to be a really solid head solid hood all right so let's go ahead and put one of these valves in i'll show you how it's done so first we'll get the right valve we've got tl tl this is the one that i had matched to that one before i put that in we're gonna go ahead and put our valve seals on just these little cups that go on top of your valve guides anytime you have your valves out you want to replace these things they just pop on top i like to give them a little bit of a spin just make sure that they're seated all the way really easy to do sometimes on like 450s and stuff these things are recessed quite a bit they can be a little bit of a pain in the butt to get on but the 400ex is really easy so take a little bit of assembly lube put it on our valve and push it in place nice and we've got a valve seat spring washer then we've got our inner valve spring powder valve spring our top now i've got this huge valve installation tool this thing works really nice if you don't have this um honestly i don't know if you could do it the one portion goes on the bottom of the valve and then the top portion goes on the top get that in place i'm hoping you guys will be able to see this i take a little bit of grease and put that on the end of my valve keeper and that sticks to it all right and then once they're in there you don't want to open up the clamp uh the shock will make usually will make them pop out so just slowly release the clamp by unscrewing it and that usually seats them just right so this one is nice and seated ready to go you want to make sure that these are good and flush one isn't like cocked to the side or anything or not fully seated because you don't want that thing popping off you also notice there's a little bit of a bigger gap on this side and then over here they're butted up against each other you might have some old school guys or people telling you that they need to be equally spaced from what i understand and from what i know that is not true when this engine runs they're going to move around so you can put them in there completely perfectly spaced and they're just going to move back in any orientation that they want so just make sure that they're seated completely so now we can put our head on you can see i've studded up our cylinder these are heavy duty studs from bpracing.com if you guys want to pick these up i highly recommend them if you're doing any high compression or big bore or even if it's a regular bore it's just a safe option to go with things like that you're going to want to anti-seize these before you put them in and also you can see we've got little dowels that go around them that's another part that you want to anti-seize so now we're going to go ahead and put our gasket on these go on dry at least that's the way i do them anyways [Music] man if i was a mechanic and i was paid per job i'd be hemorrhaging cash right now because i forgot to put the other chain slider in the cam chain slider it goes underneath the head and it cannot be put in without you have to take the head back off to put this in because it's got these two pins damn it so i'm gonna go ahead and put this in but just what the [Music] all right we're about ready to turn the key here adjusted our valves got the zoom zoom carburetor on there that is an oem replica carb i got a 180 main in there and a 48 pilot we're just gonna start from there that might be a little rich i don't know could be right on the money and we're just gonna fire it up and see we just wanna see if it runs and if it runs then we can go ahead and start you know finishing up this quad before we move on i want to thank everybody for making it this far into the video i want to take a brief intermission to thank the companies that helped make project 426ex a possibility bp racing rocky mountain atv lion parts drw performance third axis racing and ap3 racing all help by providing parts and services to make the 426 what it is these are companies that i trust and use on a regular basis all applicable promo codes will be listed in the description below one more thing if you're enjoying the video so far please give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing all right let's get back to it all right now we're really just going for a hail mary here because i didn't check for spark or anything and the wire harness looks kind of janky on this thing so i don't know the kill tether i have a wrench stuck in that because yeah so let's just see if it works man kill switch is off i think there's enough fuel in the carburetor that we should it should start up see if it even turns over [Music] wow oh yeah that little bit of smoke was probably [Music] all right it runs i feel like i'm starting to get pretty good at this motor building thing that's the second one in a row that has started right up i mean that was if this was a kickstart i feel like that was first kick but you know you know i say something like that and then the next one around it'll probably explode like a nuclear bomb like the second i press the start button so let's just uh be happy for this one so i think we're going to move on and i'm just going to start tidying things up i think what i'm going to do next is clean up the wire harness because that looks like trash and i also want to straighten the steering stem a subscriber sent me a dm um he had an idea for straightening that we're going to try it out so this is actually a little bit worse than i thought so here's the steering stem it's dirty and looks like crap uh guarantee that will clean up the same way that these arms cleaned up they're not perfect but they sure look a hell of a lot better than they used to i replaced these junky bottom bolts that were i don't even know what they were from you can tell that this has wrapped around a tree at some point in time i don't know if the camera's gonna be able to pick it up but you can see this one's like a little bit of a different shade it looks like these are chrome plated and that's like nickel plated or something i bet you he uh destroyed that one and then had a replacement made and they either put a different coating on it or it was like a different batch i don't know so i didn't notice this before i can fix that no problem but the thing is i think this is bent back slightly in fact i'm almost certain that it is basically because these are facing up so far this definitely needs to come forward if i pull the carburetor and take the air box off i think i can get in here against this main portion of the frame and then just come right over top of the engine and get right up here i i think i'll be able to do that press that forward weld it up that should be good to go and then as far as the steering stem goes but you can see it's bent back quite a bit up top and then it's slightly bent sideways if you guys can see at the top yeah you can definitely see that it's just to the left side so i think i can straighten this out myself this is a really nice steering stem i'm going to guess that it's a bergaard only because everything else on the quad is bergard but it's not marked or anything but like the flag and the welds really heavy duty this is a great steering stem definitely worth saving and then the shock absorbers these are going to clean up nice too uh i'll probably take these work stickers off not because i don't want to rep the company but they just look like trash i'll take those off and then i'm going to clean up the shock bodies and then i'm going to clean up the reservoirs all right guys check it out i got this thing blocked up and ready to go i had to take off the carburetor and the intake boot and now it's just barely sitting on top there i have this strap over top just so that this whole like unit doesn't go up like that like fly up you know in my face it's very inline it's not like arced or anything so this should put direct force right up to this and bend it forward i put a piece of um it's actually an old edger blade on there a flat piece of steel so that the um the jack doesn't drive into the wood and split it even though it's already split here we go man i'm going to take it nice and easy you want anything to break i can already see it's bending it straight back perfectly i think that's it right there probably what i'll do is go just a little bit further because there's going to be a little bit of spring in the steel it's where i'm sure it will go back just a little bit so i'm going to go just a little further forward and then i think we're good to go i'll tack this thing up we'll call it a day [Music] dude check this out it literally came out like perfect though it didn't leave any dents or anything i thought it might dent it by putting all that pressure in one spot because i mean dude i put a ton of pressure on this i had to go a little bit beyond straight and then let it off just like with the frame there's a little bit of spring in this metal i literally think this is perfect so that is a saved steering stem good thing i didn't send it to a machine shop because uh i don't really think it could be any better than that and here's our frame so you can see the silver touch-up paint i use doesn't match quite perfectly but it looks pretty good this stuff is covered anyways nobody's ever really gonna be able to tell you can see where i welded i ground this one down and put a fresh weld there and then i put a little tiny support weld on both sides here just to kind of give it a little bit of support so while that is drying we might as well go ahead and take care of the carrier and get that all set and by that time we'll be able to put our steering stem in get the front end together put our shocks on and stuff like that all right guys so check this out i don't know if you'll see this but you'll be able to hear it so it seems to me that the bearings are definitely shot even if the carrier still has life left we got a new carrier we might as well swap it out oh man we got a mess here i just ended up taking the swing arm off entirely because it's pretty dirty i mean it didn't really have to come off but i want this thing to look nice and clean so i figured it would actually be beneficial to take it off entirely we'll be able to clean all inside here and stuff it appears to be in pretty good shape we'll probably peel these stickers they're kind of cool but they're peeling at the edges and i don't like it when stickers are peeling i think it makes it look crappy so we'll remove those probably put a different sticker in its place after we're done cleaning it up anti-fade was caked with all kinds of like dirty grease kind of deal in there this is all the hardware and stuff i want to put that in the tumbler clean it up skid plate i was going to run this but dude this thing is all twisted up and there are cracks in it and stuff it's it's it's shot man seriously this thing has seen some some uh some gnarly trails for sure so i think what i'm gonna do i just uh actually ordered up i got a skid combo that came with the rear skid and a belly skid because this is going to be i'm designing this to be a trail machine so the skid plates are kind of necessary might as well just throw some fresh ones on there and then the axles over here this other hub is seized so i he i was heating it up with the torch hit it with some pb blaster i'm letting that soak for a minute sprocket looks like it's in good shape all this stuff just really needs to be cleaned up it's just got grease and stuff all over it i'm pretty sure i can make this come out really nice i also got the shocks done over here cleaned them up really really nice i got these clamps up here to kind of turn them into piggyback shocks i think that gives it a really cool look the suspension felt good just jumping up and down on as the quad was sitting the bumpers look really fresh and the way that these cleaned up i don't think these things need servicing so i just cleaned them up x on the exterior like i said i think they came out really really nice that's really gonna update the look of the machine so i got my work cut out for me we're gonna clean these parts up polish up what we're gonna polish up any bearings and stuff need to be replaced i'll replace them and then we'll get the stuff back on there [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh my god these things are seized in here look at all that rust build up there were no seals on the inside so tons of water and stuff got in here i have a new swing arm kit on the way but my god these things i really hope i don't have to cut these out this is the swing arm's gonna be a lot of fun i've decided it's a little bit too far gone this is all rust inside here it's not dirt so i'm actually gonna re-coat this i think i'm gonna make it red oh my god [Music] wow it's here guys it's finally d-day check this out all the parts came out really nice all the hard work is done all the refinishing replacing bearings all that stuff is totally done it's just time to assemble everything refinish these nerf bars got the brand new nerf bar nets in there those came out really nice we actually managed to save those things all of our hardware is right here you can see the way that came out take a look at this swing arm man i'm not sure if you guys are going to be able to see how vibrant this is just looking in the camera screen it doesn't look like it pops quite as much but this is like a fire engine red it's called safety red and it matches the honda kind of red orange almost perfectly looks great got brand new bearings and uh spacers and everything in there those had to be replaced got the niche carrier i don't think we'll have an issue with that i've been running the ebay carriers for quite a while you know if you're racing maybe no but i mean realistically these things are pretty solid got the pro 4 link right here we're going to set this on the softest setting so we'll get the most amount of suspension travel and uh that should be really nice for hitting rocks and stuff cleaned up the other piece of our linkage axle cleaned up really nice i never got this hub off dude i'm telling you man i had a really long cheater bar on here and the whole bench was like flexing trying to get this off i think it'll be easier to break this loose once it's actually on the quad and it's got you know things attached to it and i can like jump up and down on the bar you know what i mean when i'm trying to get that off this was quite a bit of work you can still see it's not perfect there was a good amount of rust and pitting on this it's still a great axle but as far as the finish i think really the only way to save this would be to send it out to get nickel coated or chrome plated i don't have time uh to be doing that so i cleaned it up really good and then i put a clear coat on it to help preserve that so it doesn't rust again so for a budget fix in the garage i think we're gonna be just fine anti-fade that cleaned up really nice i pulled this apart it was like that great that like thick greasy dirt disgusting all this stuff is nice and clean we're gonna put the asv levers on there got a billet gas cap here in here from tusk a tusk um front master cylinder cover we'll put that on got a brand new tail light too because i thought that old tail light looked like crap so i just got a brand new oem tail light we're gonna put on there got a drw k saver i don't run any machine without those if drw is available for the machine i always put it on there highly recommend those it just saves your case no matter what also check this out i got a an oem cover kind of like sacrilegious i got an oem and then cut it immediately these are literally the cover and brand new gasket is under 20 bucks brand new from rocky mountain atv and i just think it's for two reasons i wanted to do this it cleans up the look i think just having an open air box kind of looks weird kind of looks empty and you can see like back here there's plenty of space for stuff to splash through i mean granted if we're smashing puddles and stuff stuff's gonna get through but this is gonna make it it brings the edges up a little bit higher and it's gonna be less likely to get water and stuff in here i really want this thing to be like the ultimate puddle smasher i've been that guy driving in a group of people and hitting a puddle with like pod filters or i don't have like a very good air box and you end up sucking up water bogging out and you're sitting on the side of the trail for like 20 30 minutes with your air filter shaking it out and having it dry in the sun i just trying to completely alleviate that i want this thing like i said ultimate puddle smasher i also put the new seat cover on there looking pretty fly and i did some saving on the rims polished them up a little bit didn't go crazy with them just cleaned them up and i got those nice chrome lug nuts these things really look nice did all four of the wheels so uh we're about ready to start assembling this thing [Music] so [Music] what i'm doing right here is quite possibly the most important thing to do out of this entire build that is anti-seizing your swing arm bolt if you've ever had a 400 ex and you've had a seized swing arm bolt well you've probably come really close to wanting to end it all it's that bad so make sure your auntie sees your swing around bolt [Music] i'm getting ready to put the linkage on i wanted to stop to take a second to look at this because this is a nice piece look at that something about billet aluminum man this thing is sweet pro 4 link by third axis racing so what's cool about this is it has the adjustable link right here plus 3.5 inches plus 1.75 inches factory and minus 1.5 by choosing longer travel you increase the leverage to the shock and a smoother to get a smoother response best suited for gmcc and trail riding by choosing less travel you decrease the leverage on the shock and have more responsiveness best suited for small racing to medium small to medium jumps and flat tracks so i think what i'm going to try is the plus 3.5 which i have it set up for like that and we'll see how that works on the rocks and stuff [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so the skid plates are on there these were by no means an easy install i had a couple different things so typically with aftermarket stuff it's normal that you have to do a little bit of you know changing stuff up so it's not that big of a deal this was actually touching the disc brake so i had to put spacers under here you can see now we got plenty of space so that's good and solid this actually has good fitment like the um the way the sides are folded up and it hugs the frame that all fit really nice the holes lined up well what i had to do though was notch this out on both sides to fit the nerf bars i kind of anticipated that that would happen i would give these skid plates 50 50 50 good 50 bad the price was great it was 135 bucks i think there's actually 130 shipped for both of them the fitment's really good like the holes are lined up and stuff and i think they're going to do a good job the hardware that came with them was kind of chintzy but the construction is pretty solid the welds look good i like these braces back here so that these don't fold over on you so we'll have to see how well these hold up but i would say 50 50 good for the money so let's get to it man i think um i think all we have to do is put the plastics and the graphics on [Music] [Music] i'm cleaning up these plastics i wanted to stop and show you guys for these like little warning plate things i mean they're kind of lame to begin with but if you want to at least clean them up because they kind of get that yellow color i have lacquer thinner in this bottle black or thinner you can get pretty much any hardware store even walmart has it but you take a little bit put it on a paper towel and then we're just going to lightly brush this and you can see it's clearing it right up you don't want to do this for too long though because it will eventually it'll eat through like the uh the clear vinyl that's on there whatever it is and um it will actually take the print off if you go too long but real quick just wiping it like that it freshens them up and basically makes them look like brand new and then you can see here these are the glue lines from the old graphics you want to get that stuff off before we put the new plastics on lacquer thinner cuts it really easily and it won't harm your plastics either you got to be careful where you use this stuff though because some other materials it will like totally destroy it it'll like eat through paint and stuff like that it's great it's a great paint remover [Music] so [Music] so [Music] getting excited man i am getting excited i think 400 ex is probably the most experience i have is on a 400 ex literally i used to ride one back in the day and i just find myself on these things a lot man it's one of my favorite platforms of all time just take a look at that thing though man it really cleaned up super nice i'm happy with it man you guys have to let me know in the comment section below what you think of the graphics kit [Music] i still have this tag on here i just think that looks legit it kind of makes it look like it's new but i should really take that off real quick this is crazy this is literally this might be the first time this thing has been put in gear and ridden in like 15 20 years you can hear the skid plate rattling a little bit probably have to tighten that up oh that's nice and smooth [Music] the quad feels really good really nice and tight [Music] ah skid plate i hate that it actually feels like we might have uh we might hit the mark again with the jetting [Music] so [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] all right let's grab our go bag here and we'll take this thing in the woods and see how it handles the rear brake we'll have to i have to um bleed that and the skid plate i'm going to have to either like tighten it down or i might have to pull it off put like bumpers under it or something like rubber pads [Music] oh man i passed right by a cop [Music] feels good i can't believe once again with the jetting like on the first shot [Music] [Music] the bottom end it's got a shitload of torque [Music] this pole's pretty good though like on demand let's try oh let's try vlogging a little bit yeah feels good so if anybody doesn't know i'm actually supposed to get surgery on my shoulder and like literally next week and even just doing this little bit of riding and hitting these logs and stuff aggravates my shoulder i have a torn rotator cuff it's completely torn in one section and it's just never going to get better on its own so i to get it repaired and luckily i have enough strength that i can do stuff like this pulling is not really an issue it's pushing that hurts um but at least i can give this a little bit of a test [Music] [Music] great woods machine though [Music] well i just got stopped by the cops that's them right there so i gotta pack it up unfortunately this is something that i face in this area it's just impossible to find any place to ride where you know somebody it wasn't the cops it was somebody complained if somebody complains they gotta they gotta come get you [Music] well there's not much i can do about that guys that's just what happens sometimes you know people call the police but anyways uh at least we got to do a little bit of riding i wasn't really able to get it up in the rpms or anything i think we barely even touched third gear in the woods there's just no trails cut back there or anything and there's lots of logs down that are covered by leaves and stuff and as you can see i really don't have i can't be back there cutting trails and stuff because somebody's always got to call the cops as far as the machine goes though we don't even have to wind this thing out i can tell it runs really good i think we got the jetting spot on uh once again what i'd like to do is take this up to poconos and hit some rocky trails and stuff the big thing with this was um whoever gets this quad next i don't want them to have to run race gas i would prefer they run race gas i would say this is a 95 octane and up uh 100 preferably but it doesn't need like 110 or anything like that it's got the 11 to 1 compression piston in there but that's it that's why i say 9500 octane you're safe but if you really had to you probably can get away with 93. i'm not recommending that but you probably could get away with it now unfortunately next week i'm getting my shoulder repaired the unfortunate thing is for six to eight weeks i'm gonna be in a sling so i'll probably have like i'll be useless as far as riding goes anyways and i don't know that i'll really be able to build with one arm either and then i have probably a six-month recovery they say six months to a year i'm hoping that i can get it done in like half of that but we'll see i just want to give you guys a heads up though um i have created a backlog of content i've been super busy filming things and i have some some videos that i want to edit that you know from from way back and stuff so i do have some stuff that i'm going to be bringing out for you guys i appreciate all you guys i want to thank everybody for watching the grape 8 video that thing has like literally a quarter of a million views now uh really popped off i hope this video does just as good so thank you to everybody that has subscribed welcome to all the new subscribers and everything you guys are awesome i really hope that you like this project most most likely what i'm gonna do with this uh is uh i don't i don't know what i'm doing supposed to be matt uh hulk jones and uh you know plans just changed then i was thinking about doing a giveaway and i'm actually considering maybe keeping this one and uh raffling giving away the uh the kfx i don't know what the heck i'm going to do so again thank you to you guys and i also want to give a huge thank you to all the companies that help make these projects possible we have rockymountainatv.com lionparts.com ap3racing.com and drw performance atv the next project is actually a harley-davidson it's a 1989 sportster 1200. i've had it sitting in the back for quite a while that thing has been sitting for like 20 years too so i'm gonna pull that thing up um like i said though with the shoulder thing i'm not sure exactly when that's gonna happen i'm gonna try to make it happen sooner than later though i'll be doing a video just like this on the harley let me know what you think about that in the comment section below i'll see you guys in the next video please give me that thumbs up consider hitting the subscribe button and if you're looking to support the channel even further there is the option to join alright guys i'll see in the next one peace out [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Michael Sabo

Views: 709,867

Keywords: honda, 400ex, honda 400ex, quad, motorcycle, four stroke, 400ex project, 1999 400ex, 400ex rebuild, dirt bike repair, four stroke build, 400ex build, four stroke rebuild, atv rebuild, atv project, honda four stroke, fix 400ex, 2021 400ex, 2022 400ex, 400ex four stroke, 400 ex, 400ex transformation, Abandoned Honda 400EX saved after sitting for DECADES in pieces, 4 stroke, trx400ex

Id: hM3Me4eMvlk

Length: 68min 20sec (4100 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 26 2021