You ever do one of those jobs, go to put the part back in, and for the life of you it won't go in...no matter what you do?

Case in point: I pulled the engine to do the cam chain (couldn't do it, didn't have a head or base gasket). I get everything bolted back up, have a bitch of a time getting the engine between the frame rails and on a jack (man it's a heavy SOB). Then I can't get the bolt holes to line up. Spent and hour and a half cursing the day Honda built the bike. Read the manual and took 2 days off working on it. Go back in tonight and start from scratch, and it goes right in in under 10 minutes. Figures.

 

When I had my motor out, it took about 3 hours of my friend and I lifting the frame up/down and moving the motor around to get it lined up correctly. Once we got two bolts started it took more wiggling to get the others in. I had mine out because one of the bolts for broke when I was taking the header off to change the gaskets.

 

My mechanic (that I trust) and myself were concerned over using a split chain so we decided to do things by the books and use a new chain straight from Honda. Got everything ordered, engine brought to his shop, and about ready to tackle it when we looked through the manual for the crankcase separation. That's when we found that the cylinder head and the cylinder also needed to come off (apparently, there are 3 long studs at the base of the cylinder that also hold the cases together)

 

Much easier with a split chain...............around 4 hours total.
Doesn't seem worth the effort just to fit a Honda chain. I'd rather do a new chain every 15000 K's or so and fit the DID or Takasago unit.

 

Yeah, I was also going to replace the rubber dampers on the balancer shaft and clean out the oil strainer. Didn't happen, so now I have a couple of extra gaskets and some rubber bits. Good news it that I got to replace the oil seal around the shifter shaft.