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1972 Honda 750/4 SOHC

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I really love the old SOHC Hondas. Every time I see one of these it reminds me of the one project I have in the pipeline that I’m really looking forward to. I’m anxious to get to it, but just can’t seem to get it prioritized. I had a 77K between ‘79 and ‘82. Loved the darn thing and rode it all over New England.

I have had this monster for a couple of years and started tweaking on it, but pulled it off the table and moved on to other things. It’s going to need some love - and most of all, time. Oh, and money. That’s probably the biggest reason that it’s being de-prioritized!

They are fun “little” motorcycles when they are well sorted. The motor in the bike is an unknown. Probably fine, but I’d like to go through it just because it’s the last year Super Sport (78). I have a known good motor (76) that I may just pop in there to have a runner until the 78 is done right. Sharp eyed Honda-files will already detect incorrect FVQ shocks. The 78 super sport and it’s blacked out treatment carried over to the rear shocks. The ones that were on the bike were thrashed and I put the take offs from my 78 Goldwing on there. Identical in every way except finish.

They were horrible shocks and they’re only on there until suitable replacements were found. FVQ back in the day became known as “fade very quickly”.

It will not be a “restoration”, but a resurrection and mild custom.
2F9A75FE-EFE3-494F-A91E-9C1C2C136A9D.jpeg33942809-5898-447F-8D31-414BD2100DC2.jpeg
 
Over here we should all hate it as it was the bike that killed off the British motorcycle industry.

Id like it more if it was dohc, there are many modified cb1100r made to look like the original, spoked wheels, after market tank, fake oil tank etc what's not to like? Screenshot_20210603-184324.jpg
 
My first bike was a 73 CB750 SOHC. 16, bought without a title. Didnt run. Got everything fixed up, painted, seat uphosltered, bike running. Went to get the title so I could register. The guy who sold it, despite his hand written receipts claimed I stole it. Went to court, was offered 2 choices. Give the bike back or have the bike confiscated and I go to jail for 5 years. I got back at that asshole. And it was incredibly expensive for him to fix what I done.

I never got to enjoy that bike. But after, I got a 76 CB750 that I thoroughly enjoyed.
 
Not trying to squeeze fresh pus from an old wound, but did the court recognize the validity of your transaction where you had a receipt or receipts (if you partially-paid for it, over-time)? Everyone enjoys hearing a good story. A bill of sale is a contract, essentially. The seller agrees to convey goods (the bike) in-exchange for an agreed-upon, named sum, documented by a vehicle VIN and, 'paid-in-full,' signed by the seller. Was the scumbag the nephew of the chief of police or the magistrate/judge?
 
The court didnt recognize anything I provided. The bike was paid in full when I bought it. It was a field bike that was "rediscovered" and then put out on the road with a "for sale" sign. Nothing worked when I got it, rusted, torn seat, things you would expect a then 20 year old bike to be that was abandoned outdoors for who knows how long. The guy who sold me the bike was a drunk and it became his word against mine and all he had to do was produce paperwork for his "lost" title and that was it. The receipt he wrote out with his signature, owners manual, even the original warranty card(with his signature too), for the bike in my possession was not enough to convince a judge that I legitimately bought the bike. Whether the judge and this guy were related, I dont know. I was literally a kid. 16 years old. I had no parental help(they too are drunks). I had no DA help me and I was barely making enough to fix a bike to afford a lawyer. I was an easy target and they beat me. But in the end, the cost of the bike was eclipsed to the retribution done to that drunk.

I dont speak of what I did cause it was bad. I didnt cause that guy any physical harm. But he suffered immense financial harm for what he did. And it was several years after the court. So there was no way he could suspect it was me.

One hell of a valuable lesson I learned.....no title...no sale. Period. End of story. I dont care how good the deal seems. You will never ever convince me to purchase any vehicle that requires a title that is missing one. All it takes is one drunk guy and a judge to mess you up from that. Especially a kid that sunk a grip of money in it getting it road worthy again.
 
Over here we should all hate it as it was the bike that killed off the British motorcycle industry.

Id like it more if it was dohc, there are many modified cb1100r made to look like the original, spoked wheels, after market tank, fake oil tank etc what's not to like? View attachment 77368

Wow. Now although I am avowed fan of the SOHC, that is very retro cool. No doubt that thing gets plenty of double takes on the street.

And funny you should mention the 750 killing the British motorcycle industry. I was at the tail end of my British bike phase, couple of Triumphs and a couple of Norton’s, when I bought my 77. The Honda was long gone and I didn’t sell my 73 Bonneville until a 2008 divorce. Still cry over that one.
 
What killed the British bike industry? They committed industrial suicide. They didn't invest enough time nor the $ to offer contemporary competitive bikes across the range of customers, at attractive price points. The Japanese were using state of the art machine tools and production methods, building quality-in, instead of having multiple 'inspectors' at various points to cull bad builds at whatever part of the manufacturing process issues were discovered.

After WW II, Japan's industrial might which allowed them to fight, was ruined. For years, they struggled to be able to rebuild their infrastructure just to keep people fed and housed. Honda started out supplying parts for the domestic market for cars and trucks, and then decided to build inexpensive mopeds and then motorcycles.

Anyone who's familiar with TQM (Total Quality Management) will know the creator, W. Edwards Deming. He tried to establish his methods of production here in the USA, but there was little support offered by industrial operations. However, Japan Inc. offered him a place to use his ideas, and along with buying the best tool-making equipment they could, and lots of it, they were able to establish manufacturing capacity where quality was built-in and not checked, after-the-fact in the fashion of USA manufacturing at the time. Every worker becomes a 'quality inspector,' and any operator can shut-down the production line if the output for which he/she is responsible would be turning-out defective parts or assemblies. By stopping the manufacture of flawed units, a whole layer of manufacturing defects inspectors can be eliminated. The space for warehousing the defective parts, assemblies, and completed units, awaiting efforts to correct their problems, eats-up space, time, and profit. Six-Sigma is another zero-defects goal program which arose from Deming's ideas, and was developed by a Motorola engineer. It uses the DMAIC approach to problem solving: define, measure, analyze, improve, and control. The term Lean Six-Sigma is probably best-aligned with Deming's pioneering work. It emphasizes quality: defect prevention rather than defect detection.

The Japanese term, Kaizen is essentially a one-word definition of what TQM brought to Japan: build quality in, rather than look for defects after the fact. Sadly, the British motorcycle industry imploded on its own, not because of manufacturing successes by global competitors. The British motorcycle industry employees were suspected of sabotaging their own product, because of the merger of NVT (Norton-Villiers-Triumph), and the closing of BSA, who, one hundred years ago this year, was the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world. How the mighty have-fallen.

It wasn't for lack of trying that the British motorcycle industry tried to keep things going. The American arms of the British manufacturers attempted to read the market, to push for new product, and even to assemble complete motorcycles as ideas of, "what the USA market wants, now." Look-up the Craig Vetter Triumph Hurricane, a 'bitsa-bike' if ever there was one.
Triumph Hurricane.01.jpg

Triumph TRX 75 Harricane (motorcyclespecs.co.za) Yes, a mis-spelling/typo, a covfefe of-sorts.

Lots of vintage British bikes here:


This has some good info on the mood at Triumph in the early 1970's:
1973 Triumph Hurricane X75 - Motorcycle Classics | Exciting and evocative articles and photographs of the most brilliant, unusual and popular motorcycles ever made!

Made and sold by Triumph, after being designed and built as a prototype by Craig Vetter, who presciently foretold two huge markets in the USA: choppers/cruisers, and the touring motorcycles, with large fairings, and dedicated hard luggage, and yes, even the sportbike phenomenon (see Vetter's Mystery Ship Mystery Ship: The famous Vetter fairing | Bike EXIF) which had a 'halo-effect' across the manufacturers' more-common, more-inexpensive, less-performance products. Not everyone could afford a SOHC 750/4 Honda, in either the classic K model, or the F-model supersport, but hundreds of thousands could scrape together enough to buy a CB/CL/SL 350. Before those, it was the Honda CB/CL air-cooled parallel twins in 250cc (CB/CL 72) and 305cc (CB/CL 77) displacements, capable of running-through one after another tanks of gasoline at 8,000 rpm, with minimal maintenance. These came to market beginning in 1962, and quickly earned a reputation as 'giant-killers,' capable of pestering the half-liter and larger British bikes of the day, giving them fits. Notice has-been served, up your game or lose market-share. They did-not, and they did, respectively.

The Triumph Hurricane was made using a BSA Rocket III engine, but it was developed as a prototype by the American Triumph distributor, who hired Craig Vetter to build it and then was shipped to the U.K.: "this is what we need!" It was a huge departure from any-other manufacturer's offerings of the time, and it looked more-like a custom show-bike than a production piece. However, it foretold the coming explosion into cruisers which has dominated the industry for decades. Vetter's fairings and luggage created the touring bike industry, and soon Honda was offering its own wide, tall fairings and hard luggage. Other Japanese manufacturers followed suit. While the British were struggling to make three-cylinders bikes, and then collapsing almost-entirely, with very-limited production of stop-gap models ("Jubilee Edition" Triumphs and Weslake cylinder heads models) Japan Inc. was offering water-cooled four cylinder bikes and air-cooled four cylinder performance models. Then, "I'll see your four cylinders, and raise you two, now six-cylinder models!"

The response from NVT was underwhelming, that is to-say, unable to come to-market with a competitive product. Oh, there were attempts, the Triumph Quadrant, a four-cylinder effort died-aborning; The Triumph Quadrant - Motorcycle Classics | Exciting and evocative articles and photographs of the most brilliant, unusual and popular motorcycles ever made! an after-hours attempt by the engineering staff to build a Japanese-beater, it had to be hidden from the board of directors, because they were loath to spend the development $$.

Then there was the 350cc parallel-twin Triumph/BSA model to pit-against the Honda CB/CL350, the Triumph Bandit/BSA Fury. After an abbreviated release, it was withdrawn from the market, but not-before it was advertised, and put into the hands of magazine road-testers. Again, too-little, too-late.

George Pooley is a constructor/machinist who, like others (Millyard, Georgeades), has put a second cylinder head onto a common crankcase and one-off crankshaft, in this case he did it to a Triumph triple. Call it a proof of concept, though it was done long-after the collapse of Meriden Triumph.



A Wonderful Crazy Genius Crammed A Ferrari V8 Into A Custom Motorcycle - MX-5 Miata Forum

Ferrari engine motorcycle Georgeades.jpg

As a former Triumph owner, I enjoyed the product, but the Japanese were better manufacturers of what the market bought: oil leak-free, reliable bikes needing minimal maintenance (no splitting the cases to clean-out the crankshaft oil passage before 10K miles) at good price points, lots of dealers, and a hierarchy of larger, faster, more-exciting bikes, all-under one manufacturer.

"You meet the nicest people on a Honda," but the manufacturers of Japan Inc. aren't the assassins of the British motorcycle industry, the British lack of timely, effective, efficient, economic responsiveness is what nearly ended it. Thank-god for John Bloor.

triumph-bandit-BSA-fury-350-.02.jpg

Note unusual approaches: the mechanical front disc brake, not-hydraulic! And the exposed front fork springs, they remind me of the MN-based Excelsior-Henderson models with similar styling, if-not engineering for the front suspension. The gas tank has lines like the 'coffin-tank' CZ motocross bikes. The headlight nacelle reminds me of many 1950's/'60's era Ducatis, and those 'cocktail-shaker' exhausts are very-stylish! This is a very-early prototype of the Bandit/Fury, and major changes occurred due to discovery of substantial changes needed to fix deficiencies. Note the cylinder cooling fins' configuration and the design of the cyl head differences.

triumph-bandit-BSA-fury-350 in 1969.jpgTriumph Quadrant.jpgTriumph Trident V6 George Pooley.jpgBSA-Fury-Cycle-Magazine jpg.jpg

Mystery Ship Kawasaki by Vetter.jpg
 
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What killed the British bike industry? They committed industrial suicide

That's one way of looking at it. After WW2 Britain was broke so there was not the cash to invest and it was relying on dominance in the empire market whereas the empire was falling apart.

You may have heard of Jeremy Clarkson, a one time presenter of Top Gear (TV program about cars), well he did a program about what killed the British car industry.

In short no investment in product development plus inept management I terested in short term profit.

You mentioned the Japanese built in reliability, the old BSA approach was, yeah, we have a vast number of dealers so you can buy any part for when your goldstar breaks. Sounds great, but would it not be better for it not to break down in the first place?

I used own an MGB. From its launch in 1962 until the last one in 1980, the car was unchanged apart from getting a 5 bearing engine late 69s and the rubber bumper model to meet US crash regulations in 1977.

I read a book about the Porsche 911. Started around the same time. The last chapter listed the model differences and virtually every year there were changes, engine, transmission, body etc.. The continuous development has ensured porsche are still selling cars whereas MG is a badge on soulless Chinese metal boxes.

As aside, I'm surprised HD have managed to survive, although I seem to recall reading they almost went down the pan a couple of times, maybe having a large and loyal domestic market was enough.
 
I am a student of 20 century history, and much of my personal reading involves that timeframe. After WW II, England was trying to right-itself, and one way they did that was to manufacture goods for export, to help with the precarious balance of trade they were experiencing. As-such, use and importation of raw goods was prioritized, and preferential treatment was granted to industries which exported out of the U.K. Motorcycles and automobiles were two relatively-costly consumer goods which helped. You probably had a better chance of seeing an Aston-Martin, Jaguar, Austin-Healy or a Jensen in the USA than you did somewhere in the British Isles.

The MGB was one of the best autos to come from the U.K. They were reliable, and easy to repair. I had friends/family that had the gamut of the moderately-priced cars: Austin-Healy 100-6, Austin-Healy 3000, Triumph TR-3, TR-4, TR-4A, TR-6, TR-7, Spitfire, GT6+; 'Bugeye Sprite, newer Sprite and Midget (Spridget) when they became badge-engineered; Jaguar XK-120, Jensen-Healy, MGB-GT, an old g.f. had a Lotus-Ford Cortina 1600, and a friend of my father's had a Rover 2000GT, which became the 3500 V8 when they installed the GM-sourced Buick-Olds-Pontiac 215 cubic inch aluminum V8, a derivative of-which was used by Jack Brabham to become the F1 Driver's Champion in a car of his own build, still the only person to accomplish that. I saw him drive that car, that year.

The story of how a consortium of employees (management, actually) bought Harley-Davidson from AMF in 1983, and then developed a new style of management/employee participation is a Harvard Business School case-study. Harley’s Leadership U-Turn (hbr.org) Without a doubt, the product to come-from H-D are the best-ever offered in the history of the company. While sales have declined, so-has the motorcycle market as a whole. Domestic motorcycle sales have hovered around a half-million, usually a bit-less, from 2012-2019. In 2020, H-D accounted for about 30% of the domestic market. With their product selling for $10K (Sportster Iron 1200)-$40K (the 500cc and 750cc bikes sell for considerably-less, but represent a small % of their sales) they still have volume sales, just not at the level they had before the market collapse after 2007. Motorcycle sales then were twice what it has-been recently that would be one-million, ~2007. • U.S. motorcycle sales | Statista

Now compare sales elsewhere. Probably the biggest market in the world is India, where a growing middle class has money to spend of motorcycles, and as cheap transportation, the recent domestic sales in India topped 21,000,000! In other words, for whose market should companies be aiming? The domestic USA market, or one forty-plus times larger? You don't need an MBA to know that. Of course, there are tariffs, local market equipment restrictions/requirements, and possible co-operative agreements for partial manufacture/assembly to skirt laws and regulations. Indeed, before WW II, Harley-Davidson built and sold bikes in Japan. In the depths of the Great Depression, a business partner representing Harley-Davidson travelled to Milwaukee from Japan with a member of the Sankyo Corp. who sought to have exclusive rights to represent H-D in Japan. Allegedly, they were carrying $75,000 which when H-D management agreed to grant exclusive rights to the Japanese company, for sales and manufacturing. It is suspected that this lump-sum payment allowed H-D to keep its doors open, and the agreement apparently was not acknowledged by H-D until the 1980's. The Japanese were prohibited from selling motorcycles or parts outside of their domestic market. The Japanese Harley-Davidsons | The Vintagent

Harley-Davidson has multiple business agreements currently in India to get a piece of that market. They cannot afford to overlook the huge Asian market, even-if products they sell there never come stateside. The country of India certainly has the brainpower to come-up with new products. Consider this: in India, because of their huge population, the top 2% of Indian universities is a cohort larger-than the top 20% of American universities! Work harder, folks! Handing-out diplomas in majors of dubious value in the marketplace won't help us to compete against the sheer-number of excellent-aptitude graduates bearing diplomas in STEM majors. Fortunately, many of these people migrate to the USA.
 
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What killed the British bike industry? They committed industrial suicide. They didn't invest enough time nor the $ to offer contemporary competitive bikes across the range of customers, at attractive price points. The Japanese were using state of the art machine tools and production methods, building quality-in, instead of having multiple 'inspectors' at various points to cull bad builds at whatever part of the manufacturing process issues were discovered.

After WW II, Japan's industrial might which allowed them to fight, was ruined. For years, they struggled to be able to rebuild their infrastructure just to keep people fed and housed. Honda started out supplying parts for the domestic market for cars and trucks, and then decided to build inexpensive mopeds and then motorcycles.

Anyone who's familiar with TQM (Total Quality Management) will know the creator, W. Edwards Deming. He tried to establish his methods of production here in the USA, but there was little support offered by industrial operations. However, Japan Inc. offered him a place to use his ideas, and along with buying the best tool-making equipment they could, and lots of it, they were able to establish manufacturing capacity where quality was built-in and not checked, after-the-fact in the fashion of USA manufacturing at the time. Every worker becomes a 'quality inspector,' and any operator can shut-down the production line if the output for which he/she is responsible would be turning-out defective parts or assemblies. By stopping the manufacture of flawed units, a whole layer of manufacturing defects inspectors can be eliminated. The space for warehousing the defective parts, assemblies, and completed units, awaiting efforts to correct their problems, eats-up space, time, and profit. Six-Sigma is another zero-defects goal program which arose from Deming's ideas, and was developed by a Motorola engineer. It uses the DMAIC approach to problem solving: define, measure, analyze, improve, and control. The term Lean Six-Sigma is probably best-aligned with Deming's pioneering work. It emphasizes quality: defect prevention rather than defect detection.

The Japanese term, Kaizen is essentially a one-word definition of what TQM
I read your input with great interest (and enjoyed it) as my work as a contractor is based on quality and manufacturing, where my initial training started in RR as an apprentice in 1978. Not that working for a large precision company makes someone a good, or even half decent engineer. I’ll continue if ok.

There are quite a few methodologies such as ones you mention above that work absolutely fantastic in theory, but in practice do not (in the UK) anyway, i’ll not mention US as you guys work slightly different from us. I could drone on for hours on this subject as i’m a great believer in quality and hammer this into young people’s heads.

So i’ll give my evaluation on what I have seen changing in industries from1978, and why I think we are possibly losing the worldwide standing we once had even from the relatively short time of my observations.

When I started engineering I really enjoyed going to work and strived to do better every day, around me there was real focus on getting the job done correctly. Then more focus emerged on money and efficient production, great but the focus used to be on culture, not money, and now everywhere I work in the UK it all moves forward on money and politics. In my opinion young people are not getting the proper precision guided training I got and we are losing our abilities to tackle tasks that need precision hand craft. Again young folk are so much more pressurised with money than I was and work satisfaction I see is greatly diminishing. The best hands on guys I know now are not engineers but self taught people with no engineering background.

As for graduates, again the same thing, they are brought into engineering with far too much politics and minimal people with the right skills and culture to guide them forward properly. I’ve been there also.

I sponsored a guy to come to the UK permanently about 5 years ago as he was very eager and showed what I would say is a culture we are losing here rapidly. The guy was very successful, a great contributor to UK engineering and takes his work very seriously. That is the second person I’ve met with a serious attitude to work, but neither of them were from the UK. When I went into study I found the same thing where in percentage the most serious of students were not from the UK.

There will be allot of people disagree with me on this varied subject, but hey it’s a free world and I pay my taxes so can make evaluations.

In a nutshell from what I see we do not have the workplace culture anymore to implement the methodologies you speak of, it would be great if we did. In my view if you want to be a damn good hands on and theoretical engineer, and want to work with many like minded people around you with no bullshit, then you head out the UK. The nonsense we see today has killed our great industries, never to recover.
 
This was a very interesting discussion, and no surprise that the gentleman from South Florida was the catalyst for much of it. And now comes the full disclosure: I had been in negotiation for one of these creatures when this thread came up. Didn’t wanna say anything then because I didn’t know how it was going to end up, but this is how it ended up:26DBB465-3030-4DAA-A522-C41B73E3130E.jpeg388B0F49-D3BF-4F22-821C-3B49B3527109.jpegE6C988F7-BABC-4527-A622-4DAEABC4F7DF.jpegC025741E-2000-4416-BE27-878D9DC7B181.jpeg6352B0A0-8E04-40E1-8A5E-FA758A4188EE.jpeg475B2811-FD80-44F3-8396-7AD076541D87.jpeg
 
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I’m not a huge café fan, but this one was tastefully done and the only thing that’s not reversible is the powder coated wheels. The good news is there’s a nice set of untouched very nice original wheels front and rear, and all the takeoffs in pristine condition… Including the seat which looks unmarred with soft supple vinyl. This thing is a surviving gem. If the motor is toast, which it is not, note the K5 motor on wheels that I have above waiting in the wings! The only caveat is that I do not have the original four into four exhaust. It came with an unmarred, undented Kerker however.

The guy was moving to Hawaii, leaving on Friday, and had no firm commitments on this thing. Well I didn’t quite steal it, I feel as though I got a stupendous deal. Literally boxes and boxes of spares. Did I mention about an extra motor came with it? Disassembled, but complete.

This is all I needed was another project. It doesn’t need a little lot, but it needs enough to be called a project. The 78 super sport I showed above is now residing in my son’s garage. I actually gave it to him, lock, stock and barrel.

Pray for me.
 
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I like 'em as-stock as-possible, maybe with a 4/1. Different finishes on things don't bother me, like the wheels' powder coating. However, a stock external appearance sets-off all-sorts of metal-sourced pheromones for me. So-many have been modified during their lifespans, a stock-appearing CB750/4 is a real treat. That one looks like a good candidate, and it should be an easy (hopefully) return to the road.

An exception for 'all-stock appearance, all the time' is one of these:

Rickman-Honda ad.jpg

Now, I wonder where in the world you would locate one of these?

The bike of tomorrow!
Here today!
Rickman-Honda 750/4
 
Here's some visual incentive. I hope that your stuff isn't as-bad as this, from the looks of yours it shouldn't be. Notice the inexpensive tool I made to extract the master cyl piston. Worked like a charm. The front caliper on the SOHC 750/4 also needed fettling. For that, I used a grease gun to dislodge the piston when air pressure didn't budge it. Note the fine quality of the beauty mud scraped-out behind the caliper piston, probably 45 years old. In the scheme of things, sometimes they come-apart easily, other times it's like trying to brush the teeth of a hungry wombat (broke circlip/stuck master cyl piston). Following are pics of adding weld bead to re-contour the brake lever for minimal freeplay before piston contact/actuation. Bringing old, neglected assemblies back to-life is rewarding and satisfying.

Honda SOHC master cyl apart.jpgHonda SOHC brake tool.01.jpgHonda SOHC brake test.jpgHonda SOHC caliper grease gun.jpgHonda SOHC caliper mud.jpgHonda SOHC master cyl circlip.jpgHonda SOHC master cyl lever.01.jpgHonda SOHC master cyl lever weld-up.jpg

Sometimes bolts don't cooperate. This is a Honda SOHC brake caliper bolt, frozen; it's one of two holding the caliper halves together. One was a normal removal, the other had to go under the drill press, multiple passes, to thin it out before it was able to be removed.

Honda SOHC caliper bolt drilled.01.jpg
Honda SOHC caliper bolt drilled.02.jpg
 
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As usual, FM, your input is appreciated. As luck would have it and amazingly, the hydraulics are still working, front and rear, after sitting for 10 years. I'm hoping a complete evacuation, flush with alcohol and recharging, is all that'll be needed. I've done this in the past with good results.

Not sure how far I'll get before Fall. Next week's temps here are anticipated to be ugly. I don't have the heart to post specifics (google or weather.com if you're interested). Suffice it to say that if the cooler drops shop temps 20F below outside - which is fine most of the time - next week it'll still be in the mid 90's. Do the math. Welcome to Phoenix.
 
As usual, FM, your input is appreciated. As luck would have it and amazingly, the hydraulics are still working, front and rear, after sitting for 10 years. I'm hoping a complete evacuation, flush with alcohol and recharging, is all that'll be needed. I've done this in the past with good results.

Not sure how far I'll get before Fall. Next week's temps here are anticipated to be ugly. I don't have the heart to post specifics (google or weather.com if you're interested). Suffice it to say that if the cooler drops shop temps 20F below outside - which is fine most of the time - next week it'll still be in the mid 90's. Do the math. Welcome to Phoenix.
But it's a dry heat!

Please add comment upon the hydraulics are still working, front and rear as far as I know, only the SOHC 750/4 F-model had juice brakes in the rear, and Com-Star wheels, at-least in the USA. Yours appears to be a K model.

Do you use a swamp-cooler? They're useless in Florida.
 
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Brutal, max temp for the next fews days is from 38c rising to 46c.

I'm flaking out doing some gardening at 25c.
 
Please add comment upon the hydraulics are still working, front and rear as far as I know, only the SOHC 750/4 F-model had juice brakes in the rear, and Com-Star wheels, at-least in the USA. Yours appears to be a K model.

Doh. 😅 Got my bikes mixed up. Of course you're right. The K5 sports a mechanical rear drum (as photographed above).

Yep. Swamp Cooler. I have AC out there, but cost is prohibitive.
 
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