And one thing led to another..............

I have an old CX500 with a knackered engine and a (probably) good engine to
swap. Today I decided to get it done. It all went quite well up to the
point where I had the new engine in but hadn't reinstalled radiator or
exhausts. As I had the tank off and the carbs were visible I decided to
lubricate the ends of the cables. Sprayed on a bit of lubricant and a
couple of twists of the throttle and ....ping! Fecking "pull" cable broke.
So I go to remove the twistgrip to find out where the break was (halfway so
no easy bodge)....and then I noticed the leaking front brake master
cylinder. I resigned myself to not being able to try the replacement engine
without a throttle cable. So I decide to order the spares - a throttlle
cable and a mastercylinder repair kit.

Now the CX500 has two different types of master cylinder and I could find
pictures of the two different kits on the net.........but not the master
cylinders that they fit. No problem....just dismantle the master cylinder
and check out the internals is what I thought. The first two screws came
out of the cap no problem. The third finally moved after a good few whack
with my impact driver. The last one.........will not budge. I'll have to
drill it but as the cap and reservoir are plastic it will need care and the
way today was going I passed on that. OK so I don't need the cap off to
dismantle the master cylinder piston. So my next attempt is to remove the
piston.......and the fecking retaining circlip is immovable. So I left it
to soak in PlusGas overnight and I left the workshop feeling a tad peeved.

Maybe I will be able to order the spares tomorrow if I can get the circlip
out. The annoying thing is that it might all be a waste of time if the
replacement engine is a dud. However, to test it properly the throttle
cable is needed - and if it runs I will want to road test it so I will have
to do the master cylinder just in case. And I REALLY wanted to try firing
it up today..... buggery bollocks!!!!

 

SNIP!

Thanks for the info. I knew some of it already but a few helpful extra
tweaks are always welcome.

At about 70 it appeared to die. Engine picked up a couple of seconds later
but sounded very rough. Got it home. Let it cool. Restarted it the next
day but its still sounded very rough. Not " cough spluttery" rough but
"clankety clunkety" rough. I will strip it down eventually and find out
what went wrong. Anything salvageable is likely to go in my spares bin.
The engine going in is of uncertain provenance but the bloke who I got it
from said it was OK (I will find out sometime this week). I am hopeful that
it will be adequate enough to get the bike back on the road - the rest of it
is not too bad.