After a year tinkering and fettling finally got the bike on he road for a quick spin around the block, engine and gearbox not a problem, CX500 front brake modification worked well. The tyres need replacing, they are ancient and are very out of balance but airtight. Oil weep out of the front of the cam cover in spite of a new gasket is another minor issue to sort out in the next few weeks. I'm off to work for eight weeks soon and tyres will have to be done in July when I'm back home, other than that I'm pleased with the bike. Getting a 1986 Honda GL400(Japanese spec CX500) tomorrow, so another bike to fiddle with. Many thanks to Fred for his online help.
Nice to see one restored. My CB250RSD still in limited progress, but the CX500 next to it in the garage is doing very well
Shown me yours, I'll show you mine in the garage... great minds bike alike or something like that ? BTW : sure your GL400 is 1986? Looks like earlier ?
Bike is registered as a 1986, it certainly has the later dual disc, twin piston brake set up, square brake master cylinder, reverse Comstars, TI ignition set up and aluminium radiator surround. The only odd thing is fittings for the small windshield which were not always fitted to Japanese specification bikes. I'm going to look into a bit more later on
Glad my ramblings are of use to someone! If only I could figure out the niggling electrical gremlins in my two... To add to the gallery: Here's Scarlet - with Sylvie (my current daily rider) behind her. And here's Erica, before the mirrors that were on Sylvie in the pic above (not that you can see them) were fitted on her. The blue tank in the background will be repainted and rebadged eventually! More updates to the epic rebuild thread coming shortly!
I've been hoarding them! More seriously though, a lot of them have been butchered and/or turned into cafe racers. The frame Erica's motor used to be in had suffered a similar fate before I rescued it.
