Road: Poking around II. The return of the digit

You have an itch, you scratch it, you make it worse, you scratch again anyway.

This CBR has an itch and I went and scratched it again.

The main itch being a cooling system that was a touch excitable, not letting the bike reach temperature. The blame for that lay mostly with the thermostat presumably which is located, inconveniently, in that nice space behind the barrels and under the carbs, airbox and fuel tank. Such joy.
Begin the fun!
Off with the tank which was not rubber mounted and had the wrong bolts. Good start. The tank drains into a neat little cup thing so there is only one hose to disconnect that being the fuel feed to the fuel pump. Hang on this thing has a fuel pump? I have never heard that thing run up best order another one.
That aside, literally, I had the airbox to crack into. Which, a few screws later proved to contain no furry animals and a grubby K&N air filter. About time I found something good and lucky I have the proper cleaner and oil.
Next off came the airbox bottom revealing the carbs which were noticeably lacking in the inlet trumpet department. Sigh. On the plus side, what was left of the carbs was pretty clean and not too wonky looking from the outside. Off they came anyway, they were in the way afterall.



As I was clearly in no rush to get this done with all the parts I was going to need to order I just went ahead and pulled those carbs apart. Mostly to see what else sucks about this bike.
If you have taken CV carbs apart before you already know the score. Points of interest include the crazy thick needle, and oh my god be careful around those inlet trumpets they are fragile! I know I don't have any here but later I do and it's like they were designed to break when sunlight hits them.



You can see on the image with the carbs stripped; the float and needle holder are one big plastic thing. This has potential for fragility and makes adjustment on an old set of cabs a scary prospect. Good job all seemed healthy in here.
Truth be told; it was also pretty clean on the inside so a quick breeze around with some alcohol and a wire brush and we were done.
The outside of the carbs were a bit grotty, especially the trottle and carb cable connections. A fair clean up and liberal lube made both work far better.


With that done things were loosely popped together whilst I did some ebay spending.
Enter the RC46 for a quick cameo.

 Finding inlet trumpets for the NC29 is a bitch and even those that do sell copies of then want a small fortune for them which I didn't have. That said; a set of GF Racing HRC short trumpets could well be on the shopping list for the future.
Back with shopping and I spotted the CB400 SF NC31 SuperFour carbs looked remarkably similar to the NC29's and I had found a set for £50. Long story short, after much cleaning and straightening the dented trumpets, they didn't fit. Even side by side it is hard to see but the NC31's carbs are smaller. Balls.

More shopping later and I had a set of ropy carbs with some trumpets. Ignoring some broken tabs they were okay for my need. That being spares.

The trumpets were removed and repaired with plenty of heat some pliers and a broom handle (it had proved very effecting on the NC31's for making them round again).
These were then set aside till later.














 With the carbs out of the way a new Thermostat could be fitted. I had a replacement with hoses. Sadly the top dies in a seal replacement gone wrong so after a clean up the internals were swapped into the old body. As it turns out the old one was working just fine anyway so no idea why the bike wasn't getting up to temperature. Some new fluid was not going to hut though so no bad thing.
Back on went the carbs with their new throttle trumpets and a replacement throttle cable to replace that dodgy repaired one.

 The fuel pump was also swapped for one from a hornet or something (it's a common part and can be picked up for nothing) which also didn't prime like I was expected. When a current was applied to both they both farted fuel in my general direction which I later spotted they also did when the engine was cranked with a decent battery which I also fitted. I guess they aren't the most vocal of pumps.
With that done things were put back together and perfectly serviceable parts that had been swapped were placed in a box for future use. A front rubber mount was found from a Firestorm and rear one from a fireblade. These are two other fairly common pars that if you search around a bit can be found for sensible money.
A quick carb balance later and thing were ready for a test ride.

The engine was sewing machine smooth and eager to rev. I was very much looking forward to enjoying a bit of B road fun when my rear tyre spontaneously deflated and my brakes all but gave up heading into a tight left hand corner. Once I had dodged some traffic and had a little pause for thought it was back to the garage and get ready to spend some more money of this "bargain" baby blade.
Good job I wasn't planning to buzz round Blyton park any time soon... Oh wait.