I just purchased a 1984 Honda Interceptor as a project. It also came with an 85 parts bike. It ran about 6 months ago according to the previous owner. It would crank, but not catch and start. He kept it under a tarp outside. Needless to say, I have a lot of work to go. I have never done something like this, and I got it a partly as a learning experience.
I had figured it was the carbs, since that normally seems to be the case with the old bikes (my current bike is an 07 sv650, so it is fuel injected). I live in North FL, where is thunderstorms every afternoon, and we lost internet. So I just went about taking everything off, since that seemed to be the logical thing to do. It was hard to pull off, so I pulled off each carb individually. Once I got internet back, I saw this, which says to never disassemble the carbs
http://www.tholt.com/vftip.html
So, we will see how much trouble I have tuning them. I ordered a set of 4 carb rebuild kits, so we will see how that goes. In the meantime, I decided to check the compression and spark. The back left cylinder had about 1000kpa, and the back right had 1100kPa. According to the manual I downloaded, compression should be between 1100 and 1500, so I'm a little low. I haven't checked the front two, as it looks like I need to pull the radiator, and I haven't gotten around to do that, I'm also not getting spark for those two cylinders, I'll check the front later.
The inside of the gas tank is rusty. My plan is to remove the rust via electrolysis, putting a solution of baking soda on the inside and running a current through it. My battery tender seemed to be not wanting to work. Besides, the fuel tank was leaking out the bottom, where I guess some sort of float comes in. I pulled that off, and put some liquid gasket around it. That is curing right now, so maybe I will be doing some electrolysis later in the week.
Here are some pics of the carbs coming off.
I had figured it was the carbs, since that normally seems to be the case with the old bikes (my current bike is an 07 sv650, so it is fuel injected). I live in North FL, where is thunderstorms every afternoon, and we lost internet. So I just went about taking everything off, since that seemed to be the logical thing to do. It was hard to pull off, so I pulled off each carb individually. Once I got internet back, I saw this, which says to never disassemble the carbs
http://www.tholt.com/vftip.html
So, we will see how much trouble I have tuning them. I ordered a set of 4 carb rebuild kits, so we will see how that goes. In the meantime, I decided to check the compression and spark. The back left cylinder had about 1000kpa, and the back right had 1100kPa. According to the manual I downloaded, compression should be between 1100 and 1500, so I'm a little low. I haven't checked the front two, as it looks like I need to pull the radiator, and I haven't gotten around to do that, I'm also not getting spark for those two cylinders, I'll check the front later.
The inside of the gas tank is rusty. My plan is to remove the rust via electrolysis, putting a solution of baking soda on the inside and running a current through it. My battery tender seemed to be not wanting to work. Besides, the fuel tank was leaking out the bottom, where I guess some sort of float comes in. I pulled that off, and put some liquid gasket around it. That is curing right now, so maybe I will be doing some electrolysis later in the week.
Here are some pics of the carbs coming off.
Hi, I wanted to check how is your restoration going. I'm in the same boat as I just bought an 84 VF700F and trying to see if I can get it to start.
ReplyDeleteAny Ideas tips on what should I start with?
Hi Anonymous, good to see I'm not the only crazy one. I literally just started bout 2 weeks ago. I couldn't tell you much. It seems like the old bikes always have trouble with carbs, so I would consider getting those rebuilt. I just found out I'm not getting a spark. I haven't really done my research on this yet (hopefully that's tomorrow night), but I hear the units that control the spark (kind of primitive 80ish computers), are both unreliable and expensive. So I would say check your spark. But this is sort of the blind leading the blind here
ReplyDeleteHi, regarding your tank rust problem you might want to take a look at this liner as well maybe it could be useful: http://www.por15.com/FUEL-TANK-REPAIR-KIT/productinfo/FTRK/ I heard good things about it.
ReplyDeleteI am also in a similar boat, I have two VF500Fs (85 and 86) and working on restoring one. These miniceptors are addictive, once you start, the work never stops :)
Jim