Rescuing A Fan's Honda Motorcycle Project. Stumped To Pumped!

I got an email from a local fellow that's been working on a cafe bike project and he got a little frustrated with it. He ran into a couple roadblocks. And I'm here today to help get him to that next step and give him a little more motivation and hopefully teach him something. Let's go meet him. Craig, my man. How you doing? So this is Keith and he has a Honda cafe bike project and we're going to go take a look at it and see if we can get him motivated again and get him to the next step and get him on the road. Let's check it out. So here she sits in all her dusty glory. She's been sitting for a while now. She started life as a, it's an 82 Honda Nighthawk CB450SC, a face only a mother could love. They're horrible bikes. I mean, it ran, it ran like a top. It was a fun ride, but I'm glad I had a helmet on. Right. You saw me on it. They're almost as ugly as Yamaha Viragos. Oh, they're ugly too. And I've seen dudes cafe those and they still are ugly ducklings. Swing and a miss. So that's what this started life as. I've had it for about close to 10 years, I guess now. Okay. I rode it for a couple of years in its original state. Before you started. Yes. Yep. As, as the Nighthawk in its original state ran like a dream, but like a lot of guys got that cafe racer bug and so stripped it down, you know, didn't quite maybe do it to the level that I wanted to. I think large part because I was just excited to get it on the road. Right. First time, first time bike build. Yeah. Yep. That's a high budget cafe build. Yes. Exactly. So did that and it was great. Rode that for a couple of years, but I was never quite happy with it. Like just to the level of the fit and finish of some things, I parked it and I was like, I'm going to redo this better. And so that's what I did. So stripped it all down, repainted the frame, sent a lot of the parts out for powder coat, redid the tank. Yeah. I hit a few snags that just, they compounded all at the same time and I just got, I just got frustrated with it. Yeah. And so, you know what, letting it sit for a few days turns into weeks and then weeks turn into months. The next thing you know, it's a year and a half, two years and you're like, I guess I should do something about that bike in the garage. So that's where we're at. Okay. I mean, it looks like, and you did all this work, so you've, you stripped it down. All this was powder coated, it looks like, and look here, he put a single shock on the rear. So the rear sub frames all different swing arms changed here because it would have had two outboard shocks on it, changed it to a single shock. That's a really cool modification on the cafe builds. So I mean, we got, we got a good start. Yeah. I feel like it's 80% there. It's hard to get motivated sometimes, you know, you got some kids and you have a job and you have all those stresses. You know, for me anyway, I only get out to the shop at nine o'clock at night sometimes and, and it's like, dig into something by yourself and then you're like, ah, sometimes you just need a buddy to show up and have fun with and get things going. Cool. Well, I'm excited. So it sounds like we need to do some electrical work and, um, some cables, the throttle cables and kind of take it from there. Yeah. Let's do it. Get you to that next step. So one of the problems I had that was a frustration point is I put these new throttle cables on and got them all buttoned up. And then when I twist the throttle, it twist clean and smooth, but it wouldn't snap back. Okay. Like there was getting hung up somewhere. Yep. And so I'm not sure. And it was just frustration. I had a couple of buddies come over who were mechanically inclined and they were like, at first blush, couldn't seem to figure out what the, what the deal was. So help me Craig. You're my only hope. I'm here to help. Let's see if there's something going on down here and if it's at the carb or if it's in the cables or yeah, that's all good. Throttles return spring is strong. Do you want to run both push and pull or do you just want to pull functionality standpoint? Is that going to be problematic? Not really. Yeah. It's kind of like a safety thing. Yeah. That's fine. I'm not opposed to that. Totally up to you. What you want to do. Cleaner with one cable. Okay. Pop this off. That's the trick. You just take parts off and then you don't have to fix it. Exactly. I mean, less things worry about. The least parts you have, the least you have to fix. So how long have you been riding? Is this your first bike? It's hard to say. I hate to put numbers on things anymore. Yeah. It's been a while. In my early twenties, I started riding. My brother went out and bought a CBR 600. And so I would ride that, had a near-death experience on a buddy's Buell Lightning. Did it come up on you? Yeah. I'm sorry. I don't mean to laugh. No, it's good. I'm still here to laugh about it. Yeah. But no, yeah, that's what happened. I just, I hit the throttle and it, I don't know what happened. I gave it more than I thought I did. And it just ripped out from under me, sent me flying, found myself in the hospital. Then I took some time off, you know, got married and kids. And as I got a little more established, I was like, you know, I don't want to bike again. And so my brother and I bought bikes around the same time and we're riding and here we are. So it's, yeah, it's been off and on for a while, close to 20 years. How do they have this, these cables around? Dude, that thing is a real pain. They're supposed to tuck in that housing and around the handle. Yeah. They're, they're always been a bit of a, kind of a thing. Okay. So that's all like that. Pull it off. You want to start pulling off down here? Yeah. I don't know if I can, I think I can get to it, get my skinny little fingers in there. I'll show you a trick. Oh, I love tricks because this has been, these cables have been the bane of my existence. Yeah. So just unscrew that bottom lock nut, pop the cable out of that holder. So now you should. Can I move this around? I think I got it. There we go. All right. Now we want to run this one instead. Yeah. Which way should we run this? My guess is it stayed on this side of the frame. And this one sits in here, right? It sits here. Wherever you pulled it from. So it'd be. Oh, we're going back to the same one. Yeah. My bad. We're going to screw up a few times and that's all right. It's all part of it. Well, we're already making more progress than I've made in the last year. So. Put it in the butterfly first. Oh, and you have that linkage is there. And then this is always the problem I had where it was like, I have to hold this thing in place and then do the little song and dance. I had it and it popped out. I'm just having trouble because I have to bend it like back on itself and it doesn't want to do that. So if I get it in place and then the last time I got it in place, but then it got stuck. So when I jiggled it, it popped out. All right. There we go. I think that's in place. Right. Yeah. I think that's in place. We're going to say it is. Right. Find out. Is a throttle important? Only if you want to go critical. Only if you want to go places. Ha ha. Hey. Oh, question is, will it snap back once it's on the handlebar? Because it was always smooth, like just in my hand. Oh, wait. So we didn't fix it yet. Well, we could have. I don't know. Time will tell. All right. Look at that. So far, so good. Well, so actually. Let's find some screws. So the issue always seemed to be when I tightened this, when I would enclose this. So okay. What are we thinking on screws? They're probably going to be Phillips screws and they're going to be not Phillips. They're going to be JIS screws. Comment section just. You know, he enjoys woodworking when he has Craig tools. I love Craig in more ways than one sign of a good woodworker right there. What about that? Oh, that looks motorcycling. That looks motorcycling. Do you have another one of them? So you need one of that same. I would do another one just like this. Oh, Hey, Hey. What about, what about that? Is that it by chance? Oh, that could be a thing. Yeah. That's okay. We're going to get started with one here and take it from there. But I did see something here and I think we're going to switch. And it's these wires. See how these are routed through here. There's no way to get this top plate on so that these wires aren't being pinched. They're supposed to come through the bottom of this housing, the switch housing, but they need to go on the other side of this piece. I believe. Let's figure out what to do with these wires. Nice. Yes. So Craig works on the bike and I take inventory. Yeah. That's part of it. So sometimes, you know, again, it's just nice to have somebody in the shop, hang out a little camaraderie, look for some bolts, get some work done, have a good time. Craig, you think if I went and just organized some boxes in my shop, you'd fix my lawnmower? I don't even fix my own lawnmower. I take my lawnmowers and my trucks to the shop anymore, unless it's a truck I want to work on. I haven't met a lawnmower though I had wanted to work on since I was younger and I could afford to pay somebody else to fix it for me. Ain't nobody got time for small engine repair. Right. Now it doesn't want to... Doesn't want to snap back. Well, hold on. That was the issue. Every time... It seemed like every time I close that housing on it, it like creates some sort of friction or rub. I'm not sure. That sounds promising. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. Cool. Judges will accept. How do we like that cable routing? As long as it doesn't catch on anything, I'm OK with it. OK. So then... Can you tighten that down fully? Yeah. I'll show you. So you see that free play down here. So we'll tighten that up. We can tighten that up one of two ways. Big adjustments are down here with this. OK. More a finite adjustment is here with this. So this is just a lock nut that backs off. And then you just unscrew this a little bit and that's like a more of a finite adjustment. That actually is something that you did just teach me. I wasn't aware that this was a micro adjustment spot. Yeah. Like I knew obviously about the adjustment down here. But I just assumed this was part of the strain relief there on that corner. Yeah. I always like to get them. Like I said, I'll get them close down here and then I'll bring it in to the final with the smaller adjustment. So I think we have throttle cable. OK. So I'm liking all that. I did pull this piece out of the switch housing. Those two wires we were working at weren't ran right. So it kept getting pinched up and bound up in here. All right. And I think that was part of the problem. So and then we have some electrical stuff. Where are we at there? What do we have for electricals? I have some new electrical parts that I was going to put on. Just because or because? Yeah. Just because. Is it something that we want to just wait to eliminate any eliminate variables in the process? So probably what I would do is I mean, this was all running. Yes. Correct. Like I got a new I have a new one of those. Solve something in a box. And I have a new quote. If this is working, I say run these. Yeah. These are going to be better quality unless you got OEMs. Let's lay this out in a way. See where things go. This is all going to want to be up in the headlight bucket. Sound right? This mounts to the side of the frame. I think down here. OK, yeah, that makes sense. And then these things all got tucked up in that box. Yeah. I just literally just stuffed them in the box with the battery. So for now, yeah, I say we just. We get them back to where they should be. And we can take it from there. OK, cool. Yeah. Because I have things like obviously I have like a taillights and stuff that aren't on the bike that I'll have to wire up. But we just kind of get everything into the vicinity. Yeah. OK, so this is going to go here. That looks right. We'll start feeding some wires up here into the headlight. Yeah. So these are the these are the turn signals. OK, so those are going to. For now, you can just keep those out of the way. I think we're going to want all this inside the house. Yeah. That makes sense. The bucket gets a whole bunch of stuff. They're the worst. It's just a rat's nest. Yeah. And you want me to pull these up in the bucket or just leave them float for now? Yeah. Let's go up into the bucket now. This is working its way back there. Yeah. Green should be ground if my memory is correct. So this is going to get routed the same way. The neat thing is once you get a bike like this up and going that you can ride it around the block, right? Yeah. Then you're excited again. Now it's smaller bite sized pieces like, hey, I don't like how these wires are routed. So Saturday, I'm going to change that. But, you know, you don't have the whole project staring you in the face. It's just little bits and pieces. What's what brackets? Yeah. So there are engine mounts. I took those out just so that. So they're going to go right here. So this will actually probably be here inside the engine mount. I believe so. Yep. I think we're going to want to put these all under the subframe. So they're going to come in like this. It's tucking in fairly nicely. It can be more, more better. Yeah. And that's fine. As long as it's in the general vicinity. I get really weird with wires like I could do all day just getting them all in the right spot and stuff. So what do we think this is? I think it is tail light turn signal. That's what I'm thinking. I'm almost certain that's what it is. Orange, browns, greens, blues. That all looks like turn signal. Yeah. And tail light stop. So we think this is going to stay in the back. That is this. I believe, right? Oh, starter relay. And then we have our power. Oh, actually we do have that. Yeah. This is, this is just the. Brake light switch. Where is this plug? It's a flat six plug. So it's pretty intact, which is really nice. And this goes to your headlight. And then it looks like there's an arbitrary ground coming off there. That probably went to, I don't know where yet. We'll figure it out when either it does something or it doesn't do something. Some of this is coming back to me. Some of it I'm like, it's been a while. Let this thing sit for a few years. And it's funny what slips. Oh man. It happens quick because what will happen to be like, oh, I'm going to remember till Tuesday when I come out here. And like you said, Tuesday turns into July. Oh, here's a two. And I think that goes to this. That would make sense. You want me to put them together? Sure. There we go. There's a ground. Does that just ground off to like. This is a ground. Well, that's what I was hoping. Does that just ground off to like this one of these bolts? It should, but it's too short. Well, ain't that something. So there's gotta be somewhere, but I have this blue wire. I thought maybe I'd find it's friend somewhere and I haven't found it yet. Problem solved. We're going to see what the book says about a blue and red wire. What year? 82. I'm guessing it's this one because you have notes on it. Oil pressure switch. L and R. Blue, red. Okay, cool. Do you have an oil pressure light anymore? No. Everything's off, right? Yeah. Okay. What wires were coming off that one that you cut? They are green and red, it looks. Red, green. Red, green and green, orange. Neutral overdrive switch. They call that. I feel like there's always a stigma with reading the instructions and I fall for it all the time too. Yeah. I gave up on worrying about that a long time ago. You know, like you're not a real mechanic if you go to the book, but I got no way to impress. You can get the job done and it'll, bike will run and everything, yada, yada. But there's those little nuances that the book will tell you that you may not know or miss or whatever. And so the bike just won't quite be perfect, you know. It'll work, but it won't be perfect. Should I feed this back through? Yes. Yep, let's run that. And that's going to go to the solenoid. Wait, is it going the right way? No, I'm taking it off. Well, it's a rush grid. It was so much fun. Let's do it again. There we go. Yeah, see, and then we have negative gets grounded. Oh, there it is. Yeah, that's the one I was looking for. Okay, so let's see if we can figure out here where these head. Oh, okay. White, red, green, orange. Neutral switch. Oh, right, right, right. My bad. I don't see a green, red. I see green, orange. Unless that's supposed, is that supposed to be white, red? Oh, does it look like, does it look like this? Yeah. Where like a mint green? Yeah, it's more mint. This should be front brake switch. That bad boy right there? Yeah. Green, yellow? All right, yeah. Here's green, yellow. Right there. That's rear brake switch. Yeah, this guy. Yeah. Boom, boom. So put them together? Yes, sir. It is so hard looking for blue when the letter is L. Blue. L. No way. Why would they do that? You know, because B's already taken with black. What about B-L? That says B-R. I don't know. That would be confusing. It would look like B-I. Dude, you can fit such an insane amount of stuff in here. Okay, so we're going to do some continuity tests. How familiar are you with electrics? I know enough to be dangerous. Okay. So you understand continuity? Yeah. So continuity is we're just putting power in, and we're going to see where we get power out. So if we put power into here, we should have power up to here. Do you need to hold that? And we do. You said we do? We do. Wait, we did. Now we don't. There's nothing like inconclusive test results, you know? Do you have some heat shrink? I do. Do you have a solder gun? I do. Well, let's just glue it together. Am I holding you up? I'm just here to keep you company and watch you work. Put, I'll tell you what I would do, tin the tip of your soldering iron, and then we'll tin the ends of the wires, and then they'll just melt right together. So make sure you got some solder on there. Flux. Yeah, fill that up. And now get it up here. This is where everybody sees how shaky my hands are in real life. Remember, solder wants to travel to the heat. You just want to lay them across each other? Yeah. We'll just have a second set of hands here. Oh, man. Oh, did I get you? No, it just heated up. I can't hold them steady enough. Whoa, whoa, whoa, I think we got it. Is that good? I never claimed to be a professional solderer. There we go, there we go, we're getting something. Oh, look at that. Nailed it. Guys, I was trying to stay humble, but I'm going to have to brag now. Look at that. Now let me go grab a heat gun. Oh, that's inside. You work with a bunch of old people. Every time we stand up, we got to groan and moan. You'll get there one day, Dan. What about you? I'm young. Oh, man. Battery operated. Those batteries are like nobody's business, but... Well, we should get one of those. Yeah, dude. Go along with our... Well, we have the Ryobi squirt gun. Squirt gun? Glue gun. Not a super soaker. There we go. I guess that's not going to hold up. tape on there. Did it just not shrink enough or did it not want to stick? It didn't seem like it wanted to stick. Because some of this stuff has... Like a coating. Yeah, like an adhesive. Well, I mean, I guess if we shrink it down enough to shrink until it grabs the wires, that should suffice, right? Try again. Yeah. Watch your fingers. Oh, this is going to hold. I feel good about it. How do you feel about it? Like I'm afraid to pull on it. That looks alright. That'll work. Alright. Judges will accept. I can zip it to the ground. You can zip it to the ground. Yeah. You know what else you could do with the ground to clean things up? I think you can pull it here and stick it down through here. Oh, yeah. That's even better. And then get it right here. Yeah, come up through the mount. So then this... Come up through the mount. Yeah, it could do the same. I like that. There we go. Nice and tweet. Tweet like a toy gun. Everyone makes the same jokes once they start working on motorcycles. Oh, does Craig make that joke? I feel like it's a rite of passage, like you're required to. Everything I've learned, I've learned from watching Craig's YouTube channel. Uh-oh. Don't tell him I said that. Am I lined up here? That's a pretty tank. Yeah. That's the factory tank, which is a really ugly tank. You see the way it kind of kicks down. It has a little... It's just... It's not a pretty shape because it's supposed to flow into the side cover. So I found one from a similar vintage. This is from a CM400, but this has a much nicer shape, like it has the flat bottom, like a traditional tank looks. The paint on it was ugly. And so I stripped it when I first got it and just did a little quick driveway spray bomb on it. And it was fine. It looked all right. It was a five-footer. But when I did the second go around, I stripped it bare metal and then took it to a body shop and they sprayed it this color. This is Maserati yellow. Wow. It sounds fancier than it is. I think it's basically just yellow. But we did look at a few different yellows and this was the winner. This is one of the things that was one of the setbacks that all happened at the same time. This had recently been done and painted. I was all thrilled with it. And one of the things that I hunted for a while for was finding a tank that was completely straight, no dents, no rust. And then got it all done, stripped and painted. And then in a freak accident, I freaking dinged it right here. What? Yeah. Banged it up against the side of the truck. Oh no! Put a big gash right in it. You can't tell at first glance, but it also did put a little dip in there. So it's going to have to be stripped and filled and it was one of those things, those compound things where it all happened, all these things happened at the same time and it just was like, I need to step away from you for a while. Until Craig sucked you back in. He did. Gave me hope. You know what? I had nothing until I had Craig. Look at that! It's a motorcycle! Look, it's a motorcycle, Craig! It's a motorcycle. That's what a motorcycle should look like. We're doing good. Nobody will ever know those electronics are tucked in there. Nobody will know. Ah! So we got a key. You got everything you needed? Yeah, they didn't have half of what we needed, but we got enough. What did they not have? They didn't have any sort of hardware. Well, so what we're missing is this bolt, right? Which I can run to the hardware store. I can just take that one out and be like, I need this longer. So here's where we're at. We have the wire harness ran. Things are all hooked up, I believe, in the right spots. So we're going to, batteries, okay, we just need to hook up battery positive, key, great. Don't look at that. That's so we can blur that, see things, you know, just see what's going on. Okay, so we want to put some oil in and it takes, does it tell me here anywhere? It is 2.6. Quarts? Yeah, 2.6. There's probably half a quart in there, right? Well, I guess that's the thing. We don't know how much is in, huh? I'm pretty sure it's, I would say it is no more than half a quart to nearly empty. Okay. We're just going for broke. We just want to see if we can get some life into this thing, get you excited about it. Dude, I'm stoked. This is already way more progress than it's seen in a long, long time. All right. That petcock's on, fuel line's on. Is there a fuel in? No. Oh, okay. How much do you want me to put in? No more than we need to run it. Can you do me a favor? Can you just do the old light in the tank and be like, oh, that's a clean tank. Oh, yeah. That's my favorite. That's my favorite line. Just lie to me. Just be like, that's the cleanest tank I've ever seen. I heard that. The gas is so clear, you can see right to the bottom. Yeah. It's like a pond. So we have all this set. This is our ground. How about we ground right to there? That's what it was before. Yeah. Cool. This is exciting. This is where I start getting really excited because we are so close. It actually hasn't hit me that there is potential that this bike is going to run. It might start. Like, it's been three years. Is that the right nut for this bolt? Should be. Okay. I mean, if not, we'll just cross thread it, right? It won't fall out. Cross thread it. It's loctite. Look at that tool roll. That's a nice tool roll. And this dude. I didn't weigh it the other night, but this thing's got to fit 40 or 50 pounds of tools. It's amazing. And I love it. Our petcock is still off, I believe. Yeah, but it's leaking. Is it leaking? Yeah. Well, I did move it around, so it's probably not super tight. Oh, geez. Yeah. Is it just hand tight? Yeah. A little bit of gas on a hot engine never hurt anybody. I never started a fire like that. Whoa! Ow, geez. Make it worse. Biscuits. As soon as I touched it, it just started puking. Yeah, I think if I remember, it wasn't on there super tight. You just want to take the tank back off? Yeah, let's do it. Or we'll make a mess. I think that'll still give us enough clearance. We gonna find out. It should be enough to let us run it. Can we turn it on? Yeah, let's see what happens. It's okay. So it could be leaking out of this little rubber here, too. Sometimes just from sitting, they get dry. So sometimes that'll take care of itself. But yeah, you see how it's coming. Is it still flowing? Yeah, it's coming out of there. Add a new petcock to the list of... Yeah, but now it's coming out of the other carb. Is that screw tight? Yeah, that screw's tight. Okay. So we got a float bowl gasket. Let's get a couple rags in there just to help protect things for you. Right now, my main goal here is to see if we can get power, and then we'll crank, and then maybe we'll get lucky and we'll hear a little burble and a little running. We'll see what happens. Well, it's still a lot closer than it was, right? Yeah. Push the button. See what happens. We set the run. Give me a little... I got nothing. Nothing. Dang it. Key on. So ground not grounding. And now hit the... Give me a little button power. Got nothing. Okay, we don't have anything coming across this solenoid. So are we dead up here? We're just not getting power through here, and it's either because of this or because of something there or because of something between there and here. So that's what I want to figure out. Push the starter button for me, please. Yep. All right. You getting juice? No. That's the neutral switch. And which wires did we think went to there? It's the mint and red and the green and orange. Orange. All right. Now for fun. Now for funsies? No. Okay. Well, it's definitely going to be nothing if I don't have this plugged in. Come on, Craig. Plug that in. Geez. That's where I struggle. Like, just doing all this stuff off the top of my head, it's like, okay, well, what does need to be plugged in for it to, like, is it the kickstand switch or the clutch switch or the, you know, whatever switch? Okay. What's the deal? So we're good up until here, and now this is coming through. So it's possible. I don't have the right wires back here in the back. You want me to just get this tank out of here so we can see what we see? Yeah, let's. Guard your googly eyes. Just for fun, push the button. You want to push the button? Just making sure the clutch switch is definitely connected. Hit that button again. Oh, okay. Do that again. Okay. So I have power here. Oh, man. Look at that. It didn't even try. It wanted to run. Nice, man. That is exciting. Dude, that's awesome. Okay, so here's the deal. It didn't even fight to start. This and this. We got two females. How did that end up? China. So I got to splice a male onto that? Yep. Either end? Yep. All right. Now, just for funsies, turn the key, hit the button again. It's minus clutch. I'm just curious. Okay, cool. Nice. I am pumped. That is freaking awesome. But it runs. It's not pretty yet, but I hope that excites you. It does, because I think one of the biggest things, like the biggest mental hurdles was the idea that like I was going to fuss with this thing and get stuck and it wouldn't start and run. You do all of this, and then it's not going to start anyway. Right, but knowing that it runs, like there's definitely that light at the end of the tunnel that I'm... Yeah. I was stumped. Now I'm pumped. Yeah. Guys, thank you so much. This is freaking awesome. Like I knew you guys were coming, and I've never seen you not get a bike running, so I didn't think you wouldn't be able to get this one running, but it still hasn't quite hit me that it's running again. I'm excited. This is a good looking bike. You did really good so far. Well, there you have it. We came to help Keith a little bit in the shop today. We got the throttle cables on and done. That's all working. You need a screw or two for that yet. We got the wire harness in, and the bike fired up. So, I think we got you over the hump. Hopefully you're more excited to come out here now in the evening and work at it. It's actually working towards a working conclusion. Right, yeah. Hopefully you learned something too today. Yeah. A little something. Yeah. I learned everybody needs a Craig. Yeah. No, but I do appreciate you coming out. This has been... I couldn't have finished this without your help. We're close enough, man. I'm going to give you a challenge. All right. Let's get this thing done so we can go for a ride together. I'm in. All right. You want to... Yeah, I'm in. Let's go riding. Nice. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to... Like and subscribe. Check out one of these two videos right here. I know you're going to love them. Have a good weekend.