honda305.com Forum

Hi G,

It's deleted, cannot be undone,

Jensen

As I was getting the parts organised for my engine build, I came across the tank that I had put away. I picked up the new chrome panels from Prestige last week so it seemed like a good idea to get that job finished. The early panels have a continuous mount for the rubbers like the CL series. Later versions have a slotted mount. I was lucky enough to pick up some early panels with a tank. After a little bit of dent surgery they went off for plating and you cannot see the area that I worked on unless you look on the inside.

The paint finish on the tank was pretty nice but I decided to gently flat the surface with 1200 grit 'wet or dry' used with soapy water, then finished up with rubbing compound.



After that it was pretty simple to out up the panels and get the rubbers and badges on.



I managed to pick up some 'Dream 250' badges from Ray Byrne a while back and they look pretty nice. Great value, too.



G

Because I wanted this bike to be as close as possible to factory spec, I wanted to use the earlier type of muffler with the plain inlet and 'top hat' bush.



Finding genuine Honda mufflers is hard enough but finding those early ones is pretty much impossible. In the end I ordered a set of stainless-steel reproductions from Overlander in Australia. They made me a set of early Dream mufflers of a similar design but they had a bit of a mental aberration with these and added a nasty split clamp at the inlet.

The mufflers are expensive but a good representation of the original.



I don't know what was going on here though, as I sent them a set of pictures of a genuine original to copy. They swore that "they were all like that". Too difficult to send them back, I just had to cut the brackets away.




Not a perfect job but I will try and get that split welded up when I can. At least the bush fits nicely. I'll get it polished after welding.




It's nice to have a few hours to get some work done.


G

"Like" the original? Oh, it's much nicer, Graham!

LOL!

We'll see! :-)

G

I need to get another batch of parts off to the chromers to make sure that I have everything to finish this bike next spring. I still had the early rear brake plate that I got fro Gordon Brown so I decided to get all of my wheels sorted out. My bike came with a set of later hubs and I had to get hold of an authentic early set.

I thought I might as well get both sets stripped and cleaned. First up was the early hub which was still spoked to a rather rusty rim.



The spokes look too far gone but I will save the nipples and have them re-plated. After that I stripped the rear wheel that came with the bike spoked to an equally rusty rear rim. Luckily I have been able to get some tidy rims which I have already had re-plated.

The brake plates were next.

There are dramatic differences between the early and late plates. Most obvious is the position of the torque arm.



Less obvious, and the reason you cannot fit an early brake plate to a late wheel and vice versa is that the later plate is a bigger diameter and has a double flange to fit over the hub liner.



Brake shoes are also different and take different springs.

Just for completeness - here are both sets of hubs alongside each other with the matching fronts. The very early front is single -leading shoe and the speedo drives are also different. More pictures when I get everything back together.



I am going to get the hubs and brake plates aqua-blasted and will give them a nice polish once that is done.

G

Honda wasn't shy about making running changes, were they? That early CB72 only resembles the CB77 I own. It's really a different bike!