Snod Blatter

I haven't removed them, I just made sure each one came undone and then nipped them back up, one at a time - I've been bitten by crank case bolts before, absolute nightmare if they're seized solid. I wanted to know if there were any obvious "blockers" to this before I put some time into it, having been stopped by a seized bolt before. Having checked all that, and feeling like I knew what I was doing, I was disappointed that it took me so long to figure out how to let the tensioner off! And I do have a Honda workshop manual but it could be more informative.. At least I have the torque figures to hand though.

A little background, perhaps. In 2010 I purchased a 1994 CB250 for £430, hated it for a bit but grew to respect it because I couldn't break it. Fast forward to 2017 and I'm using it to go to work and tours, culminating in a frankly ludicrous trip to the bottom of Spain: By the time I got back the poor thing had 93000 miles under its spindly wheels but I was more in love with it than ever. Sadly it wasn't in the best of health, having a broken frame and some ovalled mounting holes in the motor: The frame wasn't too hard to sort, I just needed to find a bloke dodgy enough to do it, but the holes in the motor are proving rather more troublesome. It was suggested on here to fill them in with low melting point aluminium weld stuff but the cases are split vertically and I'm not sure the gasket would take that much heat, plus how on Earth would you heat that much metal that well anyway? I also recently found that, despite all documentation from Honda saying there isn't a dowel there, there is a dowel pin in one of these holes: And it's 12mm diameter while the mounting bolt is 8mm. This also means it'll be a nightmare to drill out from the outside to make it round again as I'll likely be drilling through the dowel. The only reasonable course of action seems to me to be to split the cases and drill the holes out from the inside, then probably sleeve them with steel down to 8mm at the outside edges - this will be better than stock as it seems there is a similar amount of metal there from the factory, but of course it's just aluminium. Also it should cost nothing to at least dismantle the motor and see what's what, and if it seems to be worth doing I can also fit a new cam chain/blades and some new gearbox bits to hopefully make it do things like change gear nicely and then stay in that gear. So, first things first, will all the bolts undo? No great loss if they don't, I'll just get another motor and save myself all the hassle.. This one definitely won't want to know anyway. Oh no. Another one came undone. Ugh. All the bolts holding the cases together also came undone. Guess I'm all out of excuses. Let's get this cam and head off then.. This bolt is actually broken! There are no signs of anyone having been in there before so I can only imagine it has been like this since it left the factory, which may explain why oil gets past the head gasket so readily. No studs broke! Success. If anyone knows their history, Honda spent decades trying to get cams to run directly in the head without bearings with disastrous consequences. They overcame this with the CMX250C by fitting steel sleeves around the ends of the cam. I can't really believe this is any cheaper to do than fit some bearings but perhaps it was a matter of principle by the early 80s! Spring loaded rockers, and perfect surfaces of the rocker faces and cam lobes. Unbelievable. The next problem was the cam chain tensioner - how does it work?? Eventually, with judicious use of mole grips (a tool that should never be anywhere near any engine internals!) I figured it out.. Press the square button thing (cam side) down and then heave the other bit upwards, until you can shove a thing in there to stop it going back down. This still doesn't give me enough slack in the chain to get it off the cam sprocket though, I think I'm going to have to unbolt the sprocket to get a little more room to work with. But I'll consult google first, I can't believe it needs to come to that. After so much faffing it was dark so that's that for this week..

For what it's worth, CV carbs don't like pod filters as the changing air velocity (buffeting, side winds etc) really messes with them (makes the slide go up and down). They are better with an air box which will feed them air more smoothly, and of course a well designed airbox will have a resonant frequency that will help reduce flat spots or increase performance in a certain rev range, whatever the designer aimed for. It keeps the rain from blocking the filter too.. But carry on if you want

Is this a manual or a semi automatic? I know nothing about these and google isn't helping..

Plastic bags not good enough for you, eh?? After 4 years my GORE-TEX boots from TCX started to leak, a year later it's about the same. But the top is all torn up with crash damage and wear from the gear lever, I can't imagine that would be covered.. Would it?

I'm sure you know this but it paid for people older than you to retire. It's not earmarked for you, it has been spent and it is gone - you can't seriously expect to get much of it back? Having watched my dad's pension get plundered every time it was moved to another company the whole system seems like a bad joke. I'm currently 9% into my pot, my company is adding another 6% (I'm told this is a great deal, apparently??) and it'll be practically worthless. Not that money will matter in 50 year's time when I'm 80 and about to retire, when the cheap fossil fuels run out and stuff like food can no longer be economically transported large distances the whole world will be very different. We'll laugh about how potatoes used to come from Egypt while digging up some turnips in the garden that aren't quite ready yet but there's nothing else so it'll have to do..

If only someone had perhaps mentioned that you should check the oil feed to the head.. Oh well!

We need disaster pictures, come on..

If you had given away more tickets.. How is it? Are you bored yet? Is the gear priced higher than any decent sale in a shop? Have you caved in and spent £30 for a couple of burgers in the Wetherspoons?

DUN DUN DUNNNN. Hope to help

I doubt it, the Superdream and CMX250C/CB125T lineages are completely separate. If you want to go "big block" or whatever with the CA, looks for CMX250C (250 Rebel) or CB250 Two Fifty (and Nighthawk) or CD250U engines instead. I warn you though, they're surprisingly expensive! I think the CM200T and CD200 motors will also fit but not 100% sure on that. Or, of course as megawatt says, you can make anything fit with a bit of engineering!

Got any spare?

Speedy mentioned Purple so I'm on a Coverdale kick again. It doesn't take much! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFypeWKHyDo

Sorry to say I was put off by the forecast.. Still, well done to those who did go

Stormbringer is probably my favourite album ever, but Picture sounds nowt like 'em.. This week, I are mostly been listing to Riot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-EW6fpSIm0

Well, after all that I stayed at home and rescued my long lost Dogecoins by finding my private keys because it was chucking it down all day, so much worse than what was predicted. Did anyone go? Did I miss owt?

Bumping this because it's tomorrow from 8:30 til 17:30 and free. Yes it contains Henry Cole but I'm sure he can be mostly avoided, just as Steve Parrish could be given a wide berth last year. Anyone going? I'm tempted..

Is this with the engine off or running? If you're new to bike engines you may not realise that the plates will all be stuck together with oil, they only free off when you change into a gear and the bike goes "Bang"..

You're all missing the important thing here - was the bacon any good??

Was the fuel injection control unit always at the back of the bike? Mine lives above the battery, the rear is full of ABS module instead.

Thoroughly enjoyed this last year, it's well worth a look!

Is this moving slowly in town or something else?

I did actually nearly suggest ready TWOTW but thought I might get shot down on here for it.. Personally I found it very useful and the techniques have allowed me to hustle a variety of bikes quite successfully though it does take some experimentation to find out what each bike responds well to and what just outright upsets it. As far as road riding skills go I found youtubers like Roadcraft Nottingham to be helpful in suggesting techniques like off siding and vanishing points though I wouldn't say they're exactly fun to watch. But it's free and you can go and try it all out at your leisure.. I would say my own road craft isn't the best though, far too focused on the upcoming bit of road most of the time!

2AM is an early finish, previous years have included this.. Me and Igloo stayed away from the pub this year, personally I was determined that the week was going to be about riding and enjoyment after putting a fair bit of work into getting the bike ready, and I found that curtailing the alcohol consumption and instead getting more sleep really did improve everything. I might look at all this footage one day soon

I have done the ERS, it is essentially the basics of Roadcraft (i.e. learning to pursue crims on blues and twos without chucking it in a hedge straight away) distilled into tiny little blocks where if you get the general idea then you're good enough. I remember being told straight away I was moving my K100 around on foot wrongly as I was moving it backwards by holding on to the bars, my explanation of needing to cover the front brake because the ground was sloping downhill dismissed as mere excuses as it's not what the book says.. A bit on straight lining roundabouts (I don't do this), a bit on getting up to speed quickly when joining motorways (do people really need help with this??), a bit of filtering (poke yourself in front of the car that is second in line, don't go right to the front), and a lot of off siding for better visibility which I don't do day-to-day either. Overall pretty meh and it didn't affect my insurance one bit. There is certainly no time for little things like foot position either, everything that needs to be learnt is crammed in to the time already. If you want to improve your actual machine control/cornering I wonder if something track-based may be better, like that California Superbike School or whatever else there is.