What did you do with your CB500 today?

ZekeVal wrote:I had a 275km trip yesterday with a friend.
I even had a go on his 2001 Yamaha 850 TDM: very comfy bike. The kind of bike you can munch miles with for hours.

Rideout: Great.

Here, it's light rain all day. Can't be bothered though, I'm installing new (more!) shelving in my shed to make it more functional - that means cramming in more stuff, adding lots of lighting, mains-outlets etc. And restoring a bespoke top yoke for my hobby project; the ST70. Filing, sanding, adapting bolts, priming, painting etc. Fun!

Yamaha mile-munching: Bah. Nowt wrong with the CB in that respect. It'll happily take you the distance required to join this club.

if you reckon the job will take five minutes add a good hour and you will be about right

skyrider wrote:if you reckon the job will take five minutes add a good hour and you will be about right

Dead right, but it's a labour of love.

Rock on.

it is indeed its time in the cave and that cant be wrong

It's come to that time when I need to spend a lot of money in one go again. Rear caliper needs replacing, front master cylinder, rear wheel bearings + seals, rear tyre, rear brake pads and maybe a new chain might be in the works before to long.

Replaced my rear tyre with the 003 that I had laying about for best part of a year. Managed to get the rear wheel and spacers back in first attempt, after having some serious problems getting the piston pushed back into the caliper.
 
Hit the rear brake and the front hard for a corner I misread. The rear brake binded so much the rear disc went blue and I tried to wriggle the caliper free resulting in 2 very damaged leather gloves. 

Car came down a single lane road so wide and too fast, I was about as far over to the left as I could be and almost into the gutter as I could get. I moved my hand off my right bar by about a foot and folded the wing mirror, needless to say my finger joint is still hurting. 

Great meet up at bike night at Route 59 though god knows what my face is doing though. 

I think it is smiling. Mine does it sometimes, although it's been a while.

Well today I stripped out the stock electrical charging system (stator and reg/reg) for someone who desperately needed it. Fitted the vfr 98-01 stator again and plugged it into the mosfet once again. started the bike up and sounded horrible, I forgot to put back in the spindle for the starter gear. Put everything back in all was well apart from the batter not charging after checking every connection I realised I hadn't connected the ring terminals back up to the battery. 

Been having some issues with my heated grips too, only one of them now works and even that's a maybe, really strange as it was working perfectly last monday then was playing up on tuesday, might write an email to oxford and see if I get anything out of them... I've only used them for 22k miles D:
Checked the connections and there is a bit of corrosion build up on the contacts but nothing much that and they're now coated in copper ease.

yea send oxford a chatty letter asking them can they not make a product to last

skyrider wrote:yea send oxford a chatty letter asking them can they not make a product to last

I won't mention the milage but I'll say I've only had them two years bought brand new.

Gave it a pat on the tank because it put up with a right razzing yesterday when I went on a prolonged and perhaps occasionally over-spirited burn. Squires was again very subdued. I don't really get it. Where is everyone?? Not really bothered - more road for me and my mate's lad on his fandango street triple. CB500 acquitted itself admirably was seemingly really happy to throw itself in and out of corners. Indefatigable, Ah tell thee!!

Went for spin on cb met up with anigai for coffee ,(he sold his cb)

trevor machine wrote:Squires was again very subdued. I don't really get it. Where is everyone?? Not really bothered - more road for me and my mate's lad on his fandango street triple.

Squires is exactly what I've said for a very long time "full of weekend warriors who show off their bikes to boost their egos. Most are arrogant and won't talk to you. Hate that place and try to avoid it much as possible"

If you're on the land of faceache join this group https://www.facebook.com/groups/1358601464151344/

Think I saw @jonnyteabag and Louise today near Skipton today too. 

On todays ride the back end kicked out and juddered a decent amount must have been a good 6 times or so, heroblob hit the deck as did most of my foot stayed on the peg. Going to go back and have a look at the corner and see what the tarmac is like

Finally! Fair weather - and on a sunday too!

So, I spent an hour exchanging motad -> Fuel can, cleaned off the exhaust gunk I managed to spread all over the bike, geared up, then went for a rideout all on my own.

Oh what a joy! The motad can may be nice and all, but it's not really comparable to the Fuel when it comes to the smile-per-mile factor!!

@badseeds once said it like this "Four cylinder howl, two cylinder growl!".

I'm not the loudest one out there. Wouldn't really want that. In stead, the music is 'just about right' for little old me.


And oh boy are there many posh bikes out on a sunny sunday at season's start... For some reason the crowd seems divided between trick, black, new Harleys and flashy IL4s. Barely any weathered commuter-bikes.

Oh well. The views were still good - all that green stuff popping up everywhere, blue sky and a few cauliflower-shaped clouds. Postcard-pretty. Also, kiosks and coffeshops are now open. Nice.

Only issue; my left mirror glass decided to detach itself from its shell. Once home again it was reattached with Araldite.

Finally replaced the speedo bulb after many months (have MOT this month). This one here turns out is the exact 'Stanley' one that came out despite it being advertised as Suzuki.

Also I recently noticed quite a big amount drag from the brake when I try spinning the front wheel... As a quick fix I gave the caliper a bit of a clean which helped but today I changed out the seals with OEM Brembo ones which helped further although there is still a bit of drag... Then again looking at the design where the pistons only come out of one side of the caliper I guess the disc wants to be touching or very close to the non moving pad? Anyway nice to get that job ticked off even though the brake did take a lifetime to pressurise afterwards for some reason!

Also checked my oil, my bike doesn't seem to burn it at all even though I often sit of motorway for hours at 7000+ rpm... it's a low mileage bike but still I'm pleasantly surprised!

Took my bike for an MOT, which passed with no advisories again.

I love the 'old school' garage.  They attach your bike to their cable brake tester, and winch it towards the wall, with you sat on the bike, applying the brakes in turn.

Cool ....mot station.... rare garage like that now

Took mine for a rideout with my old driving instructor.

This guy is a proper enthusiast; he arranges spring- and autumn-rideouts for those who took their license with him, and by now we're like 60 people or so. Every year we end up in his garden, eating frankfurters from the grill while drinking soda and kicking tires.

A multitude of bikes. And today the weather couldn't have been any better. Sun, not a cloud in sight and no wind. 20 degrees C.

A picture of bikes and a garden full of bikers:


I'll see if there are any youtube videos to add to this post in a few hours. Certainly there were lots of actioncams, and I expect someone to publish something.

Edit: FB-link-video-thing:
Video

What a day!

Well, the other day I noticed a weep on my radiator - quite annoying as I only replaced it a few years ago.

On closer inspection today (I scraped some of the debris and paint off) I noticed a crack:



The crack is really hard to see - essentially it is the slightly darker line slightly to the left of the middle of the scraped bit of metal.

This *tiny* crack was occasionally spurting a fine jet of coolant onto the back to my fork leg!

Not wanting to buy a new radiator right now I added some epoxy paste (JB Weld Marine version):



Not pretty, but hopefully it will at least reduce the rate at which the coolant goes down (had a look under the tank and, yes, I will need to add some more coolant).

I have no idea how long JB Weld Marine will stick (I did abrade and clean the area).

Also a note to those of you with seemingly soft-as-cheese Delkevik radiators (like mine):  I would suggest that you get some kind of wire-mesh radiator grille to try and increase the life of your replacement radiator - you will hardly notice that it is there if you spray it black and stick it behind the plastic grille, also - the internal fins are very, very easy to damage and snap off really easily.

I have a second hand one on my 'parts' bike if you want it. You can have it free if you come and take it off. I'm situated in Swansea area.

I swapped my terrible aftermarket headers for some nice shiny motad ones. Just need to find the Harpic now. 
 Old headers are in my hand and the new ones are fitted to the bike




And some extra photos because why not!

Picked up the front forks for the fighter build (albeit they're bent it's still good for the dimensions). They're from a street 675r  Sadly it came with a buggered frame and a useable swingarm. Can't complain for £23 though. 

I've leant mine to my best mate, he had his speed triple stolen off his drive Saturday night and he had no transport.

teamster1975 wrote:I've leant mine to my best mate, he had his speed triple stolen off his drive Saturday night and he had no transport.

That's very good of you. I hope your mate will be locking up the CB500!

Does your mate live in London by any chance?