CB350K thoughts

from http://www.net-motorcycles.com

First of all these are just the opinions of one person and not meant
as advice or technical information. You know your own bike. Please let
your own common sense prevail. Do not take this as gospel. It is not.
The Honda CB350 is one of the best selling (at least here in America)
motorcycles of all time for many good reasons. Part of it was timing.
At a time when many motorcycles had the reputation of being oil
leaking noise machines ridden by people who were one step away from
being back in prison or wild two-strokes with flexi-flyer frames and
dubious reliability, there was Honda. There was the perceived quality.
The perceived reliability. The good road manners of their well made
four stroke machines and most of all the marketing genius and success
of the ad campaign. "You meet the nicest people on a Honda".

The early seventies were the heyday of American motorcycling.
Motorcycles were everywhere and there were more new motorcyclists than
at any other time in American history. Honda was the motorcycle to buy
and the motorcycle that people wanted. A new motorcyclist could look
at the H1 Kawasaki but many people did not trust or want a two-stroke
which could be unreliable and back then the power bands were either on
or off so they could be very hard to ride. The Z1 Kawasaki and the
CB750 fours were nice machines but they were huge, intimidating to
most people and also rather expensive at a time when most bikes were
singles or twins and not across the frame fours.

To the people of the day the CB350 was in the right place at the right
time to be the perfect ride for the masses. The Honda CB350 was not
too big and not too small. The bike had plenty of power for most
people. I have owned eight of the machines and done two-up touring
with them many times. You could get (and even to this day still can
get) an endless array of accessories such as luggage racks, pipes,
sissy bars, chopper frames, racing frames and anything you wanted to
customize these amazingly popular machines in endless ways. They are
even to this day a very popular bike to build for vintage racing.

The power below 6500rpm was highly manageable and came on in a
pleasant rush above 6500 rpm that carried you all the way to the
bike's red-line (about 10,000rpm if I am remembering it right). The
handling was good and predictable for the time, the bike was
comfortable and well laid out, the engine was indestructible, easy to
work on, and ran forever. The bike came with many of the features that
were associated with much larger machines like turn signals, electric
start and a five speed transmission - all this in 1968!

The twin leading shoe brake was excellent for the time, the frame was
good for its day, though even back then the forks and swinging arm
were a bit on the spindly side. The shock damping was non-existent.
The rear shocks were mere spring holders and the front damping was not
much better... the bike bottomed out hard on heavy bumps and if you
set the spring tension too low the rear of the bike would oscillate
badly. Though with today's tires (Avon Roadrunners work amazingly
well) a Marzochi or Ceriani front end, disk brakes, and good shocks on
the back and some pretty serious mods you can make them into a very
fun cafe racer.

Also under tires... always replace the tubes when you do the tires and
never forget to do new rim strips at the same time... bad rim strips
can cause you all sorts of grief chasing mysterious flat tires and
they cost all of about $1.50 for new ones. The bike has many quirks of
which you should be aware if you plan to own one.

The alternator was too small for the bike even when it was new. Also,
when the bike was made you did not have to run with the headlight on
all of the time. Thus the bike's charging system is simply not up to
the task. Because of this the battery is never being charged properly
and the batteries tend to either go dead or have a very short lifespan
on these bikes. The batteries do what is called sulfating. What this
essentially means is that gunk builds up in the plates and shorts them
out thus killing the battery. There are a few things you can do to
help this. Make sure all of your connections are as clean as possible
and replace your battery cables if they are bad, as this will lower
the load on the charging system by making its job easier.

Also, buy the best battery you can get and about once a week or so put
the battery on a trickle charger for one hour. Use the kickstarter and
save the electric start for when you really need it. It is better to
use the kickstarter and always have a working electric starter than to
use the electric starter until you kill it and then use the kickstart
because you have no choice. Doing these things will go a long way to
helping the battery to live for a while.

The top ends can be a bit touchy. Make sure to adjust the valves
regularly. They are adjusted on simple eccentrics and not so hard to
do. Make sure to keep the camchain tension adjusted and be aware of
this common cause of top end failure on the CB350 Honda. The bike's
oil filter is a bit unique. It is a centrifugal oil filter and to
clean it you have to remove a little cover on the side of the motor
and then a snap ring - you MUST not alter the position of this cover
(provided it was correctly installed). Make a mark on the cover before
you take it off. If you install it any way other than the proper one
you will fry the top end as it starves of oil and locks up the engine.

Make sure to keep the breaker points and the ignition timing adjusted.
Adjusting the points/timing is a major pain on this bike and because
the bike is always spinning at seven grand they go out of adjustment
all of the time but their adjustment is critical to how the bike runs.
Replace those old stripped out case screws with Allen-head ones and
save yourself some grief there.

Make sure to keep the carbs synchronized. Make sure that your carbs'
CV vacuum diaphragms and carb to cylinder head intake boots are not
cracked and leaking. Make sure to keep all of your cables lubed and
adjusted and make sure that you have the proper free play in them. Do
not mess with the stock air boxes or put pods on the bike, they do not
like it with the stock jetting.

Make sure the twin leading shoe front brake is set up right and have a
pro do it if you are not sure. Also know that on the front brake and
the clutch there are two adjustments. The one at the levers and the
one down below. Make sure that your steering head bearings are not
baked and that the swinging arm bearings are not wiped out. Make sure
that the fork seals are not leaking and an upgrade to progressive
suspension springs is a good idea.

Have the wheels trued if you are not sure whether or not they are okay
and any damaged spokes replaced. Make sure the fork oil is of the
right type and at the right level and make sure that your wheel
bearings are in very good condition. Keep them packed and replace them
if need be. If EBC still makes shoes for the bike they are excellent
and if your exhaust is rotted out Motad is a good source which is
available in the United States through
http://www.te-motorcyclespares.co.uk/.

The bike has one major problem... as well made as it was the 5 speed
transmission is just plain bad. It is notchy. It locks up. It has
false neutrals. The real neutral is hard to find and it requires some
finesse to work with. One problem is that you come to a stop, you are
in fourth gear, you want to downshift to first but you can't. That is
because you needed to have been in first before you ever came to a
stop, this is done by pulling the clutch in and pressing down on the
shift lever until you feel it click, then letting the clutch out, (one
gear per clutch pull), then let the clutch out, pull the clutch in and
do the next downshift. For upshifting it is similar - you have to pull
the clutch in, upshift, make sure the next gear has engaged, if not
pull the clutch back in and do it again holding up on the shift lever
until you feel the gear solidly engage or you will encounter one of
the many false neutrals that the bike has.

So if you have false neutrals do not panic it is just how the bike was
made. A Barnett clutch and 5w/50w Castrol Syntec can help with this
situation. But mostly it is a unique skill to work the tranny on the
CB350 Honda and in 35 years your transmission may have bent shift
forks so that the gears really do not engage properly, worn dogs that
cause it to pop out of gear when you give the bike gas to accelerate,
or a host of other problems associated with age, wear, abuse, or a
combination of all of these things.

Lastly... it is well to understand that the CB350 in some form of
perspective. In many ways it's the VW Beetle (the old air cooled ones)
of the motorcycle world. Ask yourself which sells more - the Ford
Escort or the Chevy Corvette? Answer: The Ford Escort. The Honda CB350
did nothing very well... the beauty of the machine was that it did
everything okay. Even in 1972 there were faster bikes, better handling
bikes, more comfortable bikes. Bikes like the Triumph 650 Bonnevile
and the Norton Commando which could blow the Honda into the weeds.

CB350s are nice bikes to own and ride; they are great commuter bikes.
What kept them popular for so long was this: They were cheap and
easily obtainable. In 1984 in America you could easily buy one for 50
to 100 dollars and for 500 dollars you could get one with low miles
that looked like it just left the showroom. Now sadly people want 1500
dollars for one that a person has to put a ton of money into when for
2500 dollars you could buy a new Kawasaki 250 Ninja which is in the
spirit of the CB350 in that it is a small, lightweight, inexpensive,
and sporty machine with many features associated with much larger
bikes.

But the 250 Ninja's frame, brakes, tires, suspension, electrics,
features, handling - and in every other category you can think of -
make the CB350 look like some relic from a bygone era (which in many
ways the CB350 is). Which is why I now ride a very sweet and fully
customized KZ650, these days, which I bought for 300 dollars (about
one third the price of the CB350's I was finding when I was looking to
purchase one) as a basketcase and rebuilt myself with all kinds of
nifty goodies.

The CB350 is a personal experience, a tinkerer's machine, a good first
bike, a great way to go to work and back, or some nostalgia for those
of us who remember them when they were new. They will not stop on
their drum brake like a modern bike, they will not turn on their
skinny tires like a modern bike, they do not have the power of a 250
Ninja, they have bad head shakes over 100 mph and if you try to go
riding with people on modern small bore sport machines or older but
larger bikes such as Nortons, BSAs, Kawi KZ's, or Suzuki GS's you will
be pushing the bike harder than it was ever meant to be pushed and the
spindly swinging arm, the pencil thin fork tubes, ancient frame
geometry, lack of suspension damping, poor valving, skinny tires, drum
brakes, and the fact that you have the engine strung out as far as it
will go, can all work to get you way in over your head a lot faster
that you can handle with no way to recover.

These machines do not like to be pushed. If you are riding with people
and you feel like you are pushing the bike harder that you should -
you are! - and you need to slow down and find other people to ride
with. If your friends give you a bad time about not keeping up,
understand that many people have let their pride and ego get them
killed. Ride the bike for yourself. Never ride for anyone else. This
is important on any machine but absolutely critical on the CB350
Honda.

The CB350 is in reality a 35 year old small bore commuter bike.
Understand that the CB350 is (and was in its day) meant to be a
reliable commuter, something you can go for a ride with your wife on
the back on a sunny day, an enjoyable bike to own and to work on. The
bike is not and was never meant to be a canyon carving, tire burning,
earth quaking, fire breathing road machine or a loaded down long
distance touring ride. Understand that the CB350 is best when viewed
as a unique machine and a fine example of an enjoyable vintage
Japanese motorcycle or one machine you can use to do everything (like
the aforementioned VW Beetle).

If you own one... congratulations! You own a nice machine from
motorcyling's yesteryear and if you enjoy the machine for what it
really is you will find that one of the greatest joys in life is to
own, work on and ride your very own CB350 Honda


from http://www.net-motorcycles.com

 

<snip 300 lines of cut and paste>

Why the bloody hell did you feel it necessary to post that lot?
Wouldn't a url and brief explanation have been better?

Fuckwit.

 

would you have bothered to click on the link then?

 

Probably not, but at least we'd have been able to decide for ourselves.
Anyhoo, no-one here's fussed about what some Merkin thinks about his CB350.

'Arry

 

Thus spake Greg Chambers unto the assembled multitudes:

Irrelevant. If anyone was interested in reading your thoughts on the
CB350K they'd have clicked the link. Those not interested would have
ignored it. Posting only the link would have saved thousands of copies
downloaded and propagated whether or not anyone wanted to read it.

 

Have you ever heard of context?

 

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember (Greg
Chambers) saying something like:

If it was interesting enough, yes. The post was only interesting if you
particularly wanted to read about SOH350s.
That way, you gave us no choice about downloading it.

--

Dave

GS 850 x2 / SE 6a
SbS#6 DIAABTCOD#16 APOSTLE#6 FUB#3
FUB KotL OSOS#12? UKRMMA#19 COSOC#10

 

I didn't bother reading the post. What's the difference?

 

Same here, if you see a post with a 13KB body with a subject heading on
something you don't like why bother with the download to even look at it?

Half the people in these NG's need to get one of these....
http://tinyurl.com/3fko3
Then again maybe we all do.

Pass my coat I'm off to get mine now.

 

feck orft.

but it was a bit OTT for a random posting with no special context.

 

For bandwidth pikeys[1], several more seconds of connection time while
it downloaded.


[1] Which is sometime me if I'm posting from home.

 

Is that a paragraph which tries to sell flog you a dodgy set of wheels then?

 

You have a swimming pool (nearly) but no ADSL/T1/SatLink <delete as
appropriate>
Amazing

 

Correct. Swimming pool is something I want at home, fast connection is
not.

 

UR my Antimatter

Nasty smelly chemical infested things.

 

Well currently it's a nasty smelly algae infested thing, until I get a
chance to clean it out for the summer :-}

 

coo, has it got that poisonous blue-green algae, or just the ordinary kind?

 

Oh just ordinary[1]. It's been covered all winter and it's just the
sides and bottom that need cleaning. It'll get re-dosed with chlorine
and anti-algae stuff at the same time.

[1] I hope

 

it was bike related, which can be said more for the rest of this thread.

 

Hmmm, should be obvious by this lot that my original post was much
more interesting than anything that followed - and I do not see the
bit about relevancy as the CB350K is available in the UK as well as
the USA and problems with the breed will be similar with
self-corroding thrown in for good measure in the UK.

And the site, http://www.net-motorcycles.com contains loads of UK
reports on old bikes