Honda 550 Four Part 6
Things are beginning to come together now after all of the dismantling, cleaning, checking, plating and polishing - it really spurs me on to do even more as I see something else which detracts from the overall appearance. The rear brake pedal was a bit twisted and the outer surface quite scruffy. Like a lot of Honda stuff, although chrome plated all over, only the visible side surface is originally polished prior to chroming and that was very dull and worn through in places. It straightened up OK but when I learned that one of our Forum members (Oddjob) had a couple of NOS examples for sale - I took the plunge and bought one! Like I've said many times, many of these parts are getting scarce, even second hand, so someone will probably be glad of my original - especially for a customised bike, where it could be painted (or gold plated!)
The battery carrier has gone back in, all smartly painted with the rubbers fitted and a new (genuine) rubber strap from David Silver. Although I'm not attacking the whole front end just yet, I unbolted the brake caliper and had some pleasant surprises - the swinging pivot is still very free, the pads are as new and the piston pushed the sliding pad out, using master cylinder pressure with almost no effort, even the nylon ring washer was still as new and undamaged; I was able to push back the piston with my thumbs - now that is unusual on any of these Hondas that have been standing for any length of time! The caliper actually had an unmarked stainless steel piston fitted - yet another bonus! This whole front brake assembly might be a recent replacement but as long as it's serviceable, I'm not too concerned and as this master cylinder is a relatively new after market one, I think I'll just flush it through and paint the caliper and re-assemble everything for now. I do have an original master cylinder which came with the bike but will need re-building sometime.
It also means that as soon as I fit the carbs, I can actually give it a test run - with brakes!
I did have a bit of 'fun' with one of the inlet manifold studs - it was only about half normal length, having been snapped flush with the manifold, so that one was relying on 3 studs instead of four. The remaining part was just not quite long enough to get my roller stud extractor on and I wasn't about to remove the head to extract it. During a long soaking session in the bath (me, not the bike!) I decided I would run a 6mm die a bit further towards the head onto the plain section and with an aluminium heat shield on the broken stud up against the inlet port, I could thread a nut on it and silver solder it with a small nozzle in the oxy/acetylene torch. I countersunk the nut slightly beforehand and then built up a little dome with silver solder. After cooling, it just unscrewed from the head - result! The cleaning and fluxing was worth it too, as the solder had penetrated right through to the back of the nut.
The finished speedo - crimped and ready to fit and then just the rev counter to do.
Whilst waiting for some more parts to finish plating, I removed the other cam end/rocker spindle cap and gave that a good polish. It's certainly getting close to being useable now but I'll carry on with the improvements meantime; I'm even tempted to splash out on one of those twin stay front mudguards from DS - the present single stay original is not brilliant and I never did like the two fork leg stay holes having nothing fastened to them - looks like something has been forgotten!