Last Tuesday, I got word from the insurance company that the ‘78 Honda CB750 was covered, so I could try to start it and make a test ride. A friend was present to witness the big moment, but the bike refused to start. I didn’t feel like wrenching (not in the least because I didn’t have anything to remove the smaller-than-usual spark plugs), so we parked my friend’s bike in the garage (small woman riding big K1100) and went upstairs to toast on, well, at least some points for trying.

Thursday, I was armed with a freshly bought tool to attack the spark plugs. Removed number four, kicked, and I got beautiful sparks and - guess what - a bit of a rumble! Put the plug back in, kickstarted again, and the engine started. And died again. And started again and died even quicker. Oh well, I heard the sound (nice) and learnt the bike has character refusing to fire up in the presence of women…

As the carbs were peeing fuel all over my garage, I suspected that some carb CLA is in order. So I removed the carbs, and went upstairs to feast on beer for that magnificent accomplishment (yes, this is going to be one heck of a long project ).

The good news - it smoked much less than I expected. Which means that the smoke the seller saw when trying the bike probably originated from oil remaining in the exhaust or something like that, and that certainly means that I’ll leave the head on for now, until I get it running decently (in the meantime, I am still going to tear down and rebuild the other engine).

Oh - and two more decisions have been made. The bike will be painted two-tone: matte heat resistant black and Hammerite black. I’ll probably christen it “Darkside” after the paintjob, as a pun to the old biker’s adage - “keep the shiny side up”

This entry was posted on Friday, April 28th, 2006 at 8:28 pm and is filed under Motorcycles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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