best and worst designs

Re: > Wonder if that is why my Honda CB350 of the mid 60's scored and chewed
up

My early 70s CB500-4 needed its #1 cylinder's intake valve re-adjusted
almost constantly (about as often as it got ridden, which wasn't all that
much). Turns out that, even though the (steel) rocker arms were free to
rotate on their (steel) shafts, the shafts were also free to rotate in the
aluminum carrier. This resulted in the carrier journals wearing out very
quickly. When I became friends with a master machinist, first he mumbled
something about stupid design and then he took the whole assembly into the
school where he taught machine shop and, with a pro-grade milling machine,
put threaded holes in the sides of the rocker shafts, flats on the outside
of the carrier journals, and inserted machine screws through to hold the
shafts solidly in place (allowing the steel rockers to rotate on the steel
shafts -- no more steel shafts rotating on aluminum journals). He was such a
perfectionist that he even made threaded holes in the ends of the shafts so
a screw could be threaded in to enable pulling the shafts out super easy.
Once this modification was cinched down tight, no more problems with wonky
valve adjustments...

 

It was about 1967. The parts counter guy at Bill Krause Honda in
Inglewood showed me a bunch of replacement parts for early model
Hondas. He said that Honda was farming out engine parts production to
anybody who would build the stuff at a cheap price. One of the
camshafts he showed me had a great big divot right in the middle of the
lobe, but whoever made it shipped it to Honda and Honda's receiving
inspectors bought it and exported it to the distributor.

Sometimes stuff got mislabelledor got put into the wrong bin and got
shipped out as the wrong part number. He showed me a piston for a
Yamaha production road racer. It had a big square hole hand formed in
the rear skirt of the pistonto feed a booster port that the road-going
motorcycles didn't have.

He said, "It looks like some kid cut a hole in the back of the piston!"


Who knows, maybe Kenny Roberts did it when he was a kid...

 

That is the most wonderful ride in the country. Capitol Reef to Mexican
Hat and back again. I wish we'd had more time for Utah, but I don't
think my Suzuki could even hit 90...

Thank you for reminding me.

--
Cheers,
Bev
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Little Mary took her skis upon the snow to frisk.
Wasn't she a silly girl her little * ?