This afternoon I went on a quick 35 mile jaunt with Seth P to exercise the PC800, now fully reassembled. While I was at it I tried out my new heated gear. There will be a post about the placement of my Heat Troller at a later date. For now I can say that it is GREAT to have warm hands and feet while riding.
Rebirth of the PC800
Today I put the Honda Pacific Coast most of the way back together. A few pieces of plastic are waiting until a small and important hose comes in the mail. Until then I’ve kluged something together that requires some bits of plastic to stay removed.
So far after the Great Shim Debacle of 2009, it seems that my bike runs okay. There aren’t any strange noises and the bike performs the same as before. Perhaps I won the lottery on this one. Either way, I plan to carry the extra shim on the bike at all times in case it suddenly becomes necessary.
Total ride was about 25 miles. It was just enough to get the bike warm and exercise it a bit.
The Trouble with Tappets
Last week I opened the heads on my Honda PC800 to replace the cam plugs. It is a relatively straight-forward job. However, there are three tappets per cylinder that can cause some problems. Sometimes the tappets won’t release from the head cover until it is in just the right position for a tappet or tappet shim to fall into the engine. That happened to me. Or I thought it did. The missing tappet surfaced after I started hammering on the oil filter with a screwdriver to get it to come loose.
I thought I was in the clear but then after I reassembled the heads I discovered an extra tappet shim! This could be a problem but I’m not entirely sure. I reassembled the engine enough to listen for any bad noises. The video below is what it sounds like now. What do you think? Am I in the clear or do I need to rip apart the heads to check tappet height?
This is when I had the back head cover off.
This is the bike together enough so I can try firing it up. It took about two or three minutes of cranking and recharging the battery with the trickle charger for life to come back to the PC800.