Spent an hour in the garage tonight getting the cylinder body cleaned up a bit and reinstalled. This involved several steps, all of which were messy and environmently unfriendly. First step was to get the crankcase seat for the cylinder body cleaned. There was some nasty gasket gunk that felt as strong as metal. Brake cleaner and wire brushes cleaned it up enough to get a good seal.

Next up was the cylinder body itself. The cylinder wall is in fine shape with no corrosion (whew!). The exterior was pretty grungy and needed to be bathed is solvents, scraped, and wire-brushed. It looks better but will never look new unless it is sandblasted. That's not really worth it in this case since it is a dark material that sits low on the bike. The rest of the gasket was stuck to the bottom of this part and took a significant effort to get completely removed and cleaned away. It looks pretty good now. The first two pics are before, the latter two after.

Where old gaskets are removed, new ones are needed. My replacement gaskets are a very nice set and are, in fact, every gasket and seal that the engine needs. Reaching way back to my Small Gas Engines class in high school, I recalled that new gaskets need a light ring of 30w oil, so with the gasket ready to go into place, it got a light oil bath and fit perfectly.

Each of the new piston rings has to be compressed. This is really a job that calls for an extra set of hands, as someone has to pinch the rings while the other lines up the cylinder and feeds it onto the piston. These are tight, by design. I wish my dog had opposable thumbs. I got it myself after some finageling, and the piston is back at top-dead-center for the first time in a year.

I'll get the head back on this weekend, but I think a valve is stuck so that might be a significantly larger job. The first step will be to figure out where I put the pushrods.

Spent a little time in the garage with Dad tonight before the UFC PPV fight. Was good to have a second set of hands to help loosen the screws holding the ignition points. They were very easy to replace with a much cleaner set that I bought. The new ones theoretically have only a few dozen miles on them. Here are the old, and then the new.

In today's world of liter+ hyperbikes, Harleys that cost more that average cars, and custom choppers that cost more than some homes, it's fair to ask whether 90cc 1960s Hondas are cool enough to merit restoration.

Obviously, I think they are.

Today I got a bit of reinforcement courtesy of Mad Men. I love the show, and have been catching up on the back seasons. It's worth watching... just get on Xbox LIVE and say, "Xbox, Bing Mad Men," and it'll take you right to it. 

Today I watched season 4, episode 5, "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword." It's set in 1965, and who approaches Sterling/Cooper/Draper/Pryce as a potential account but Honda of America. A product they want to push is the good ol' 1965 Honda CT200...

Don Draper is one of the coolest characters on television. The fact that he's wheeling around a CT200 validates that it's worth restoring. 

Now back to the garage.

It's hard to believe that I let over a year go by since doing anythign on this project. My last post was back in October of 2010, and that was the first in months. So what's the hold up? In a word: work. I'm rejoined the ranks of a team and project that I love (Xbox), so it's easy to let all of my extra time that doesn't go to family funnel into work. While that may sound like a bad thing, I actually consider myself incredibly lucky to work on a project that I love with people that I enjoy working with.

Balance is important, though, and hobbies like this project are an important thing to balance in. With the holiday coming up, I'm hoping to get back into the project more regularly. Ideally, I'd like to have the motor running by January. That's a stretch, but we'll see. 

To start toward that, I began some general cleanup on the exterior of the crankcase. The cylinder is still pulled and all oil drained. I'll flush the crankcase when I'm done. Here's how the crankcase looks with 40+ years worth of gunk on it:

I spent about an hour just cleaning it off. Haven't used any solvents other than elbow grease, but it is beginning to clean up pretty well:

Next weekend, I'll try to get the crankcase thoroughly cleaned and get the cylinder and head back on. That shoudl be easy provided I can figure out a gasket. After that, this poins have to be replaced:

I already have a new set, but am shopping for a cover for them. All of the ones on eBay are pretty beat up and I haven't seen any NOS anywhere yet. I'm hoping beyond hope that I don't need to dissamble the crankcase. It looks to be in good shape as-is and it'd save me a lot of time to leave it in tact.

Thanks to the generosity of my good friend Leon, I have several parts back in beautiful new condition. He had these powdercoated and they look fantastic!

They're still in the back of my truck, but this is a sneak peek at the next phase of the project. The before/after difference is amazing.

The carburetor body is as clean as it's ever going to get, and individual parts have been stripped. I've reinstalled the floats and main jet. Pics of that are below.

Unfortunately, I need new o-rings before I can go any further. I can't find any online at all. A few vintage parts suppliers have carb rebuild kits or gasket kits what have both the o-rings and new gaskets (which would be a bonus) but none of them are in stock. If you know of a source for 64-65 carb gaskets and o-rings, please let me know!

It has been a while! Work perpetually in the way, but I got this video in the email today with a glimpse of the Honda 90 body parts newly back from refinishing. They look great!

This forces me to get on with the engine clean-up now. I'm going to start that next week. What a great motivator this is!

Mom found an old photo of the Honda 90 back in 1983. That's my dad and
brother when Scott was about 11. They're at an apple orchard in
Wenatchee, WA. It was already a little beat up by then.

Though day-job work has kept me away from must restoration lately, I'm
going to try and get the carbs worked on today.