Here's the back story on this bike as told to me; Several years back this bike was restored at the Kaplan Motorcycle Museum in Rockville, Connecticut. It was auctioned by Kaplan and purchased by a collector in the Dayton Ohio area. It was later sold to Williams Vintage Cycles in Xenia, Ohio. It was from Williams that I got the bike.

Now the bike is in great cosmetic condition and is almost 100% original. It does however have some issues mainly from just sitting in a collection. This once over covers the issues I found in the process of getting the bike into what I call ridable condition.

Valve & Cam Chain Adjustment:

When I first started the bike it made a bit of valve train noise. This was quickly corrected with a valve adjustment followed by a cam chain adjustment. For the valves the #1 cylinder was just about spot on, but the #2 cylinder was quite loose. No harm done, better the tappets be loose rather than too tight.

Everything else checked out on the bike. Brakes worked good, tires while the rear is older, it's been kept indoors and show no cracks or signs of wear. The bike starts easily and idles okay. It seems the idle speed is set a bit low for me, but it's not something that needs immediate attention.

First Ride ( 3 miles to the Post Office & Back):

This short shake down ride quickly exposed several other problems. Starting out the bike ran fine although I must admit I was taking it very easy. It was on the return trip when getting up to speed that the bike started miss firing. I couldn't quite put my finger on fuel or spark being the cause of the problem.

The fuel system:

I pulled the plugs and they were black as in a rich fuel condition. I pulled the carbs to go through them and found that where they were to have o-rings for seals that they had paper gaskets over the hard dried o-rings and were covered in something like anti-seize compound.

The carbs didn't appear to be too dirty, but I took them apart and ran them through the ultra sonic cleaner anyway. I ordered up a couple of carb kits and gave the floats an adjustment. They were both set too high, possible cause for the rich condition? All the original brass seems to be in very good usable condition.

The Air Filters:

These bikes came equiped with dual foam air filters from Honda. Luckily, it does have the original filter housings, but they are wrapped with some thin material that I assume is some sort of filter floss? At any rate, I purchased a 14" X 17" X 5/8" sheet of fine 65-PPI Uni air filter foam to make proper filters.

I cut the foam into two strips 4.5 inches wide & 8.5 inches long. The strips wrap and fit perfectly on the housings to create proper oiled foam filters.

Fork Alignment:

The one other thing I noticed on the shake down ride was that the forks were out of alignment. By this I mean the tire does not point in the same direction as the handlebars. It's not a hard fix, but it can be quite annoying to ride a bike in this condition.

Parts are ordered for the carb rebuild, the filters are good to go and the forks have been straightened. When the carbs are rebuilt, it will be time for another shake down ride to see what crops up next. The joys of old motorbikes.....

Ride safe & take care - Dennis