Motorcycle Madness
So last Sunday I purchased another motorcycle. Why would I do such a thing when I already have one that I don’t have completely functioning, you ask? Because I am a glutton for punishment.
But actually I’ve been keeping my eye out for something small that my roommate could ride (she’s nervous of being on something “too big”). My sister, who is not a very large person, also expressed interest in learning to ride after having come back from Vietnam — the primary mode of transportation there is the motorcycle, and she spent several weeks on the back of one.
So I perused Craigslist and on Sunday, I bought this:
It’s a 1975 Honda CB200T. It’s in pretty decent shape cosmetically — a rip in the seat and some rock chips in the tank, but other than that I think it looks pretty nice (I do have the plastic side covers too, they’re in great shape; they’re just not on the bike in this shot). The kid I bought it from said he rode it all last year (and it did have a college parking permit for last year stuck on one fork), but it was not currently running. He said he thought the carbs needed adjusting.
The battery was dead, and when I put my fingers on the bottom of the carb, I came away with some nasty fuel. I figured that since it had been running, it likely just needed some carb cleaning love and a battery and it would be good to go! I paid him and we pushed it up into the back of my truck and away I went.
I spent a few hours every day after work cleaning it up. Flushed the tank, dismantled and cleaned the carbs, put in some new spark plugs, drained the oil and cleaned the oil filter screen, took the chain off and scrubbed at it some. (Actually my roommate did the chain.) Bought a new battery and got that all charged up.
I put it all back together and put some new, clean fuel in it and went to start it up…cranked great, sounded okay, but wouldn’t fire. I leaned over to work the choke lever, and…
…there was oil just oozing out of the cylinder base.
So, either the cylinder housing is cracked or the cylinder base gasket is not good (or possibly the o-rings on the cylinder housing mounting dowels are rotted away).
I shouldn’t have been surprised. As I was getting it cleaned up I kept saying to myself, “There is a lot of oil all over this engine…” But I attributed it to the fact that whoever had worked on it before had done a shitty job of putting things back together — I kept finding untightened bolts and screws, bolts in the wrong spot, etc. I figured it was just leaking from poor reassembly after an oil change.
No such luck.
I was kind of despondent. I didn’t really want massive project, and this was way beyond anything I have ever attempted to fix myself before. But I dug into the repair manual and pulled up an exploded engine diagram on the internets and made some phone calls.
More bad news! They don’t make the cylinder base and head gaskets anymore. (For a thirty-five year old motorcycle? Why the hell not? Heh.)
But after talking it over with my dad (my go-to for mechanical advice), I decided I would attempt the repair anyway. I’ll either craft a gasket myself from a pad of gasket material, or make the foolish attempt to use a gasket compound.
My goal for this evening: get the engine out of the frame and up onto my work bench. The picture above is one I took right before I started. I started a little after five o’clock and by seven-thirty, this is what I had:
Success! It wasn’t too bad with the aid of a Clymer manual. The engine is now on my bench (Chow Yun Fat is guarding over it to make sure no one messes with it):
Tomorrow I will dig into the guts and see if I can seal up this damn leak and get a running motorcycle out of the deal.
Here is one more shot, with my other roommate’s Triumph in the background. It makes my little Honda seem like a toy.
