Resealing the Air Box Boots on the PC800

A problem that more and more PC800 owners are experiencing is oil leaks from the air box boots.  The boots connect the air box to the carburetors.  They are glued into the air box.  Over time, this glue eventually fails.

Usually excess oil vapor and overfilled oil is drawn up from the crank case and into the air box where it mixes with incoming air that then is burned in the engine.  The tube you see that connects between the air box main body and the lower boot in the photo above developed a large leak.  In order to fix it, I used some silicone that I found at the auto parts store.  It was rated as being very heat resistant and plastic compatible.  The stuff had a horrible smell.  I had to keep all of my windows open while working with it.  One note of caution is that gluing should be done where you can make sure that the air box will still fit onto the carbs correctly.  I didn’t do that and had to manhandle the air box back onto the carbs.

And then there were four: The Nekked PC (Honey Badger Morcycle) joins the flock

About a month ago a fourth motorcycle joined my Japanese Iron stables.  The fabled “Nekked PC,” a PC800 that had been stripped of almost all of its plastics and ratted out, had come up for sale on the IPCRC.  An email exchange with the original owner of this 1989 Honda PC800 Pacific Coast followed.  The owner was nice enough to trailer this bike up from California to Corvallis in exchange for a very reasonable amount of money.  And thus the Nekked PC became mine for the purpose of finishing the fuel injection conversion project that I have been slowly completing over the last year.

As you can see, over 100 lbs of plastics have been stripped from the bike.  The bike takes on an entirely new handling characteristic without all of the extra mass and wind resistance.  It has taken some getting used to in order to anticipate what the bike will do.

The original headlight and instrument cluster remained on the bike.  This gives it a strange, raked-out look that I kind of like.  I am considering cannibalizing the headlight housing in order to build an HID projector and angel eye effect into the stock housing on my other PC800, The TARDIS.

Yes, those are two Mercedes car horns.  They would never fit under the plastic of a fully plasticized PC800 and they rub on the shocks but they work very well.  It is a nice after-market touch.

With all of the harnesses exposed, this is a bike meant for fair weather.  Also note that this is a California model and has the emissions control equipment intact and fully functional.

 The rear fender is from a dirt bike.

 This is from just after I got the license plate for the bike.

 

It definitely has a post-apocalyptic fell to it.  I haven’t decided yet if I will try to find another set of plastics to recover the bike with or if I will leave it as-is and pass it on to the next owner once my fuel injection project is complete.

 

One final note: Heather has decided that this motorcycle should be called the HBM (Honey Badger Motorcycle) because it doesn’t care that it’s naked.

XL500S Engine Rebuild

Between January and February I tore apart the engine on my 1979 Honda XL500S to fix some oil leaks in the head.  Things would have gone faster but I needed to buy some extra seals that I hadn’t expected on needing and my schedule has been very tight with graduation fast approaching.  This is the engine partially torn apart on my workbench in my apartment.

 I devised a tool to replace the valve seals.

A bronze bushing cut into pieces and held in place by a big C-clamp worked pretty well.  Obviously a $150 tool would have been easier but for $15 this was good enough to do four valves.

 

After I finished rebuilding the engine, I brought the frame of the motorcycle inside my apartment.  The weather has been rotten the last few months and I didn’t want to spend hours out in the rain and cold trying to force the engine back into place.

I got the engine back in with the help of a few of my boys.  After re-tightening the spark plug, the bike fired right up and has been running great.  In the future I might want to rebuild the carb and replace the choke cable but otherwise this thing is a good strong runner.  It is a real hoot to ride, too.