Big Honda hasn't been running very well of late. It's been getting hard to start and it's using an awful lot of fuel.
I discovered that one of the plug caps was no longer fitting properly and I think this may be causing the reluctance to start. The HT leads and plug caps are 20 years old so I decided it was time to replace them.
This is a pretty straightforward operation. The HT leads on the CBR1000F can be removed from the coils by simply unscrewing the bezels and pulling the leads out (Most coils are like this, but some bikes feature coils with moulded in HT lines that can't be changed).
The bezel sits over a dished metal washer and a silicone olive. These can be removed from the old HT lead and reused on the new ones. Push the new HT lead into the coil (it pushes over a pin), screw back on the bezel and your done.
I've been using red NGK plug caps on pretty much every bike I've ever owned. They're reliable and pretty water resistant and they're not very expensive. I believe the black caps have built in suppressors while the red ones don't. Either will work perfectly well, I just like the red ones.
This seems to have cured the reluctance to start, and maybe it'll help with the fuel consumption.
However, I think (at least I hope) the fuel consumption problem is caused by the leaky seal between the exhaust collector and the silencers. A while back, I removed the silencers to weld in some repair patches. When I went to reassemble them, I didn't have the right sized exhaust gaskets so I made some up using exhaust bandage. I knew this would only work as a short term solution and over the last couple of months the homemade gasket has been dissolving away and exhaust getting noisier, the bike has been getting unpleasant to drive and the fuel economy has been declining.
So today I took the opportunity to replace the homemade gaskets with proper ones, and while I had the silencers out I did a bit more welding on them.
So now Big Honda is much quieter and is noticeably smoother with better low down torque. Hopefully it will improve the fuel economy. And hopefully these repairs will last for another year or so...
#HondaCBR1000F #CBR1000F #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage
I discovered that one of the plug caps was no longer fitting properly and I think this may be causing the reluctance to start. The HT leads and plug caps are 20 years old so I decided it was time to replace them.
This is a pretty straightforward operation. The HT leads on the CBR1000F can be removed from the coils by simply unscrewing the bezels and pulling the leads out (Most coils are like this, but some bikes feature coils with moulded in HT lines that can't be changed).
The bezel sits over a dished metal washer and a silicone olive. These can be removed from the old HT lead and reused on the new ones. Push the new HT lead into the coil (it pushes over a pin), screw back on the bezel and your done.
I've been using red NGK plug caps on pretty much every bike I've ever owned. They're reliable and pretty water resistant and they're not very expensive. I believe the black caps have built in suppressors while the red ones don't. Either will work perfectly well, I just like the red ones.
This seems to have cured the reluctance to start, and maybe it'll help with the fuel consumption.
However, I think (at least I hope) the fuel consumption problem is caused by the leaky seal between the exhaust collector and the silencers. A while back, I removed the silencers to weld in some repair patches. When I went to reassemble them, I didn't have the right sized exhaust gaskets so I made some up using exhaust bandage. I knew this would only work as a short term solution and over the last couple of months the homemade gasket has been dissolving away and exhaust getting noisier, the bike has been getting unpleasant to drive and the fuel economy has been declining.
So today I took the opportunity to replace the homemade gaskets with proper ones, and while I had the silencers out I did a bit more welding on them.
So now Big Honda is much quieter and is noticeably smoother with better low down torque. Hopefully it will improve the fuel economy. And hopefully these repairs will last for another year or so...
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New leads and caps installed in the coils.
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If this is new to you, the sparks in #1 and #4 cylinders fire at the same time. #2 and #3 fire 180 degrees later. For any given pair of sparks, one cylinder is just about to have it's power stroke while the other one is just about to have it's exhaust stroke. The spark on the exhaust stroke is wasted, but this is a much simpler setup than having four sets of coils and four sets of ignition pickups.
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Cutting exhaust repair patches out of an old CX500 petrol tank. Pretty much every vehicle I've ever owned has bits of CX in it.
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The curved profile of the tank fits the diameter of the silencer almost perfectly. Which is nice.
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All the paint and rust and filler and crud has been cleaned off with a grinder.
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The finished repair. It looks a bit rough but it's solid and in any case, it's mostly hidden under the pannier.
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#HondaCBR1000F #CBR1000F #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage
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