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1979 Honda CB750F Super Sport Restoration Build

Timbo Slice

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Good morning guys! I am not a stranger to forums but this is my first post on CB750.com. I'm a big Volvo car guy and a mechanical engineer by profession, so in slowing down some of my car interests I decided to look for a bike as it's not something I'm familiar with and I needed something to tinker with. I've been meaning to get back onto a bike, and I think I've finally found the perfect one to begin a long and hopefully good relationship with.

Enter my 1979 Honda CB750F Super Sport that I picked up for $1,000.

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After a bit of commenting back and forth in another thread (and in the interest of not thread jacking someone else's build page), I decided to start my own topic on my bike. As you can tell, the bike has had an aftermarket paint job. It's forest green that transitions to purple depending on the light and angle. I really like the look of it as it is, but am also interested in potentially restoring it to it's original beauty of the sport racing bike it's always been. Something like this:

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Anyways, upon checking out the bike in Upstate New York at 19F degrees, we got the bike started with a jump in no time at all. The bike ran on 3 cylinders and the owner was sure that it was just a frozen plug, as one month prior when the weather was nicer, he was daily driving the bike with zero issues. I felt comfortable with it as just about everything checks out. I figured I'll toss a set of new plugs in it with some fresh gas when it comes time to start it for the season and hope it picks up right where it apparently left off. Oh, the bike has 40k miles on it and I bought it for $1,000.

Considering small upgrades, I don't necessarily want to Cafe it, but rather just build a nicer handling version of itself. Tighten everything up, maybe some upgraded suspension components, some more sport friendly handlebars, and then just drive it for a while. Thoughts?
 
Run the valves and don't use the service manual setting number of .003", use rather .005" as a shoot for number. Solid reasons for it. Virtually nobody ever runs the valves and then they run like crap.
 
Set the valve clearances.

The engines are known for burning valves at .002" even though the number fits into the service manual data as acceptable. Why? Because the .002" is not a real world number, commonly when running the valves will then be at zero and they burn. The cam clearances are way looser than the valves are and then the valve springs push cams around in the cam cap holes to make fake numbers that are not real.

The bikes have big trouble with it as even the service mechs shipped them out needing slight changes but still running and they make much more money doing that. Owners flat hardly ever set them as doing so requires looking for shims.

Frozen plug, that's a good one, bike could be doing exactly what I'm talking about.
 
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