Forgotten Honda CB550: Will it run?

what's going on guys welcome at the classic octina and Taylor today we have this basket case of a CB 550 in the shot we're going to be doing a will it run because this is the next customer project we are starting on so this is going to be a full build I'm going to pull the engine out we're gonna be doing frame on vacations it's gonna end up as a classic octane special we're gonna start to call it because a lot of my 550 bills are very similar so this is going to be actually a doppelganger to the midnight blues evening 550 project we finished up a little while ago the customer actually saw that bike fell in love with it so that's what I want how much to build me one of those and I luckily already had a good donor bike so we're gonna make another one it's going to end up being midnight blue it's gonna have an English toffee color tough side seat with a little up sweet frame hoop LED lines black wheels black engine was in bacon blasting accents black exhaust with our stainless muffler battery box you know become usual classic octane treatment I do want all of these bikes so we'll see how much I end up filming of this project I want you guys to leave a comment down below and let me know how much you want to see I will 100% cover the painting of the gas tank we're not going to use this one because it's got about a pound of bondo in it we're gonna use one of my better donor tanks but I know you guys have been dying for a how-to video on how I paint my tank so for sure do that we'll see what else you guys might want to see maybe this is just another one we knock out behind the scenes before we get started I figured I'd give you guys a little bit of an overview of this bike what we're looking at here so this is actually a cb500 frame with a 550 motor in it somebody's done some modifications to this bike in the past but nothing crazy and nothing that we can't fix so the main modifications are it does have extended front forks and the relocated rear shock so you see that this is traditionally where the bottom of the rear shock would mount back in the 70s that in 80s they would put these sweet relocating brackets on here so it lowers the back of the bike the extended Forks like his sweet Easy Rider stance like I guess they're trying to go for a chopper style look we're gonna be ditching all of that going back to a factory front for putting the shocks back where they're supposed to be the wiring on this bike is all here it's kind of hacked up which is pretty common on these bikes so I always just start with a brand new wiring harness for the cost of a brand new harness it saves you you know in a lot of time of tracking down people that are just kind of spliced stuff together and wiring is something that most people aren't terribly comfortable with which means a lot of bikes end up getting kind of hacked up and that's something that will easily leave you on the side of the road best-case scenario worst-case scenario could you know cause a fire or that kind of stuff so the engine seems to be in pretty good shape it feels like it's got good compression turns over easy the carbs are on and complete which is something I also look for in a donor bike just because a full set of carbs is relatively expensive to track down for these bikes does have a for open exhaust we'll be ditching Matt as well but it'll work fine for us to get the bike running so what I need to do now is start the initial checks we always do want to will it run so I want to see if there's oil in the bike and the condition of that oil then we'll start to kind of check out our wiring and see okay do we have coils are they wired up properly you know what are we gonna have to make shift and put together to get this thing to turn over properly and then we'll go from there maybe spray some starter fluid down the carbs and see if it gives us some pops and bangs got this thing up in the air a nice comfortable working height double-check our oil definitely got some in it doesn't look terrible I say this every time but just to reiterate we are gonna replace this but just to get the bike running yeah this should be just fine just looking to make sure it's not super like milky like there's a bunch of water in it and that there's enough to keep us lubricated for the short period of time we'll run before it's all torn apart alright now that we've checked that the wiring is a rat's nest like I mentioned so let's go over there and just see if we can kind of piece together that there's enough of the wiring to get power to our coils and stuff or if we need to just start from scratch I'm gonna go ahead and pull off the seat in the gas tank as well just to get out of our way so you can get away with pretty minimal wiring to get these bikes to run all you need is power to your coils which is a black with a white stripe that typically runs to one side of your kill switch and that's what actually kills the bike is cutting the power to the coils this one doesn't have any kind of kill switch or anything in the factory location so I'm not sure where this black with a white stripe is running so we'll have to trace that and see if it's going to a good you know Keyon or switchable power source if not we can just hook it to the positive side of our jump box we're also looking for the signal wires yellow and blue in this case that run down to our points to run one and four and two and three for turning the engine over of course you can just use the kick start if you want to use the starter motor we're going to need to figure out how our starter solenoid is wired typically it would be looks like ground on one side power to the yellow with a red stripe on the other side I can see that our yellow with the red stripe that would typically run up to the start button is just chopped off in this little nest of wires here so we can't rely on that but and I find this quite frequently on a lot of my projects somebody has run one of these old-school push-button starts that literally just jumps the starter solenoid with this huge clunky push button so that's probably gonna work for our we'll run video I would never ship a bike like that I don't like setting these up I would rather you know kind of wire it up the way it's designed to run from the factory not you know kind of go around it for no real reason like we probably have enough here to get going so let me hook up my jump box to our positive and negative wires make sure that nothing starts smoking or frying and then we'll hit that button and see if the engine at least turns over this jump box that's a negative hooked up one thing I just noticed is there's actually no ignition switch there's no key on this bike it's been removed at some point so we're almost certainly going to have to just hardwire our coils let me hook this up this is always the sketchy part because there's a rat's nest of wires and who knows if there's any kinds of shorts or anything okay thank you I think we're gonna be good yeah I don't hear any sizzling anything crazy so let's hit this button and see if this thing turns over nope Oh see see this is what I'm talking about this is why I didn't want to use this little button I don't know if you guys saw that but this thing just started smoking over here because these are not really designed to carry that current properly so I should've just trusted my gut not tried it let's just jump into the way we traditionally would starting to do a little more digging into our wiring it looks like our starter solenoid is bad tried to just jumpstart directly to the give power to the yellow with a red stripe and we're not getting anything so I think the actual solenoid itself is bad so we'll probably just jump it we can actually either just jump it with a screwdriver or run the positive cable it's running down with a starter motor just straight to the jump box again none of that's suggested but it'll work for our temporary solution so what I'm working on now is making sure that we have power to the coils and this wiring man I I'm glad I made the decision to just replace it it's been just hacked together so there's black with a white striped supposed to be two-hour kill switch looks like it was just hacked in right here with some electrical tape some of these blue Home Depot connectors and nothing says you know I'm an amateur electrician than using these on your motorcycle don't do it get proper bullet connectors the proper ones are not any more expensive they're just not available you know it Lowe's or Home Depot so get the right bullet connectors I think I have I'll throw a link in the description to the bullet connectors that I run they're inexpensive but they're like the same size and diameter and everything at the OEM Honda bullet connectors used you just have to have the proper crimping tool and if you're gonna wire any amount of your bike it's worth it just to get the right tools so I'll be able to just run this straight to a positive source and that should give us direct power to the coils so what do you say we hook up a solution to turn the motor over we run some power to this wire we'll pull a spark plug see if we have any spark see if we can get some spark in this thing positive to the starter solenoid coils okay spark plug right here resting up against the head let's give it a shot just connected my negative two no I think my starter solenoid or my jump box is getting a little bit dead but you know if you guys can see it we got spark over there oh yeah so we definitely have spark on number one let's go ahead and check number two as well you guys don't know or haven't seen one of my other videos these classic condos do run basically number one and number four or run off the same coil and number two and number three or run off the same coil so we check number one and number two in theory it should tell us that both of our coils are operational so let me pull that plug yeah now we're ready to check spark on number two it's gonna be this guy yeah I think we're gonna have to clean the points on this bike see this unlike the apocalypse triumphs so far and I should probably hesitate to say this this bike wants to come back to life so let's uh throw these plug back in and he'll spray some stuff down the carbs I wish I still have some starting fluid or even some brake parts near or something I sure don't have anything so I'm just going to put a little bit of gas in a squirt bottle squirt it down each carb and we'll see what it does I can't hook up my exhaust fan because it's for individual exhaust pipes and my exhaust things just for one so I'm gonna open up the garage door here in a second should this thing actually fire off just to get some air moving in here and then later in the video when we actually clean out the carbs and everything well kind of open it up and run it for a little bit longer but I just want to see if this is going to be enough to get some pops and bangs connected let's see you see this was I've been working on this thing maybe fifteen minutes and it made that much talking bangs I worked on that stinking triumph for six days it's probably and didn't even get this far this is why I'm honda-san i'm sorry guys but they just come back to life who knows how many years this thing's been sitting dormant and we didn't have to do anything to this bike other than kind of hotwire some electrical system and that's it and I just wanted to come back to life so that's awesome I'm pumped let's go ahead and pull these carbs off and cross my fingers they're not just full of gunk so let's end of the day if you are in the apocalypse find a Honda better yet just come to my house man I got enough for all of us those those of you wearing classic octane shirts will of course get priority you know pic of your motorcycle for our apocalypse motorcycle gang I am getting off topic now overall these don't look terrible they're gonna clean up pretty nicely of course we'll give them the full of a cab last treatment read Jett them all that kind of stuff I do see it's missing two of the small nuts on the slide adjusting or the sync nut some way you officially call them but these little parts that have little connecting bars are supposed to be a little 8 millimeter no this goes on there no matter I have tons of spare parts especially for these carbs because these are the ones I do the most for male and rebuilds I can pretty much do them with my eyes closed at this point so let's rip a couple of these balls off just so we can really see it's a good idea to use power tools on this one because a couple of these screws look a little bit stripped already which I sometimes replace these with stainless allen head just because they're less likely to strip I'm so stoked of this thing just coming right back to life but triumph is just beating me up over the last week or so oh yeah look at this so this tells me one of two things it was either parked before ethanol fuel was widely used or the person actually drained the fuel out before the bikes act the fact that they're this clean on the inside means they definitely were not sitting with ethanol in them they have a hundred one hundred and thirty eight or the jet so pretty factory will switch those two 110 and 40s because we're gonna be running pod filters on these it's cool another one or two off just so I don't get ahead of myself saying these things are in great shape and we find ones got barnacles growing on it so far so good cool so instead of boring you guys with me rebuilding these I will probably just fast forward until they're done I showed I have a how-to video on exactly how to rebuild these carburetors I'll throw a card up now for that video I actually just did a time-lapse of me rebuilding a set of carbs just like this the other day I'm gonna throw that in right now and just imagine it's these carbs okay go [Music] [Music] [Music] boom just like that I mean that time-lapse was definitely this set of carbs and I was definitely today that we know for sure overall they were in pretty decent shape my gut feeling is that somebody got in here the last person on the bike did a very rough kind of rebuild clean-out we had brand new secondary Jets well three brand new Jets one broken jet and then brand new main jets as well nothing else that looked like was touched so we put in kind of some new pieces some reused pieces overall and like I said they weren't terrible I had to steal a return spring with a little pin that holds it a couple of lock nuts I think that was it off of some of my spare carbs so what do you say we throw this back on the bike and see if we can get this thing fired up and actually run for a little bit the very rough throttle just so we have something that we can modulate it with fuels turned on using my auxiliary tank I get a question every single time I use this shift up Amazon I'll throw a link in the description to this it's a super helpful first stuff like this where you can't use the gas tank on the bike or you want the gas tank removed sink the car something like that so fuel have been on for a little while no leaks or anything that's good I am going to flip on our choke we need to hose our series of events here we got battery power plus our power to our coils leave this wire here it's like so don't think I'm forgetting anything definitely should've charged my junk box standby they switch out to me you jump box hooked up should be good to get out so Stern your guide on this be trained over a little bit my hand see if maybe that little gear in there just a little bit all I think your starter mind about let's see quick kick start so obviously rain a little bit on the rough side that's just because there's been no tuning whatsoever no like you know the layer mixture screws are just set kind of a base level they've not their bench synced but you know there's still a lot to do to make this thing run properly go through adjust the valves I think we're getting a little bit of a misfire on number four it was warming up but it wasn't quite as hot as the rest of them but all of that stuff will finalize after the bike is built I just wanted to make sure that this motor is good you know for not running for a number of years and you know a couple of kick starts and firing up and idling and stuff the way it did I'm happy with that success in my book well I'm pretty stoked about that excuse the background noise I still do have a fan running to try and get some air circulating through the shop so I don't die of carbon monoxide poisoning but I mean this is why I love classic Honda's man every single Honda that I have tried to get running has run we're literally a hundred percent success rate right now because they they're just very reliable well-built bikes and you know that's kind of why they're near and dear to my heart so like I mentioned earlier in the video I would love if you guys could leave some comments below I'm gonna actually upload this video this afternoon so this is gonna be real time on this build if you guys could tell me what you want to see I am gonna do the how to video on paying the gas tank like I mentioned I'm probably going to put together like a time-lapse style video for this entire build I'll just kind of time-lapse everyday I'm working on the bike put it all into one you know maybe ten minute video at the end but let me know if there's anything else you guys want to see this isn't gonna be really any different than the last couple of bikes that I've built we are kind of getting into building a lot of similar bikes luckily as a business that's kind of the best-case scenario because it's bikes that I can build with my eyes closed I have tons of spare parts and that kind of stuff but as I've mentioned you know where we started the last build it doesn't necessarily lend itself to a bunch of kind of new and interesting content so I'm constantly while reading all the comments and taking into consideration what you guys want to see so let me know in the comments below and I will try to accommodate so I appreciate you guys watching we're a hundred percent success rate on Honda will it run videos we'll have to challenge ourself again very soon I actually have a build in the works with a customer right now that is a bike that is totally different than anything I've worked on before so let's hope that that build continues to go forward I got a locate one they're kind of hard to find so we'll get more info on that when the time comes appreciate you guys watching as always thanks for liking subscribing all that good stuff I'll see you guys soon

Channel: Classic Octane

Views: 29,924

Rating: 4.9415112 out of 5

Keywords: Honda, CB550, Cafe, Racer, Build, Project, CB750, CB350, CB360, Yamaha, Motorcycle, Garage. Shop, Update, Triumph, hardtail, bobber, chopper, welding, fab, springer, custom, trail, riding, dual, sport, pit, bike, monkey, Stunt, gloves, cam, corder, burnout, handlebar, stunts, stunting, wheelie, hd, drift, Xv1100, XvS650, Harley, Davidson, motorcycle, review, comparison, scooter, fix, tips, tricks, tools, painting, glueing, soldering, design, fabricating, solution, motovlog, will it run, cold start, rebuild, first start

Id: eaCfeAi00Xg

Length: 27min 57sec (1677 seconds)

Published: Wed May 13 2020