Hey Guys!

This seems to be the place to hang out, so I figured I'd share my story! Last weekend I bought my first motorcycle. The previous owner apparently purchased it in sad shape when he was in high school, he spent a couple years working on it and trying to restore it, but graduated and left for college out of state before finishing it. I guess after college he caught the travel bug and has been over seas. Well, after taking up space in their barn for almost 6 years, his parents decided to reclaim the space, sell the bike on Craig's List and mail their son the cash.

So now I'm the proud owner of a $600 '87 CBR600F! The bike is not running, and is not even fully assembled. We trailered it, and a bunch of boxes full of parts, home. Over the week we finally took inventory of what we had and what was missing.

In the boxes we found:

• two voltage regulator/rectifiers
• a spare set of front forks
• a spare set of wheels with tires
• a spare set of cowling stays
• two airboxes w/o filters
• almost all fairings/cowls including a spare set of rears (missing: right lower and left access hatch)
• spare rear tailight assembly
• front turn signals
• spare wiring harness
• spare swingarm
• spare unidentified sprockets
• spare fuel pump
• spare seat with additional seat cover
• misc bolts and pieces

The bike was missing a battery, airbox, voltage r/r, and all the fairings. Judging from the parts boxes and the near completeness of the bike, our best guess is that he was mostly finished working his way through the whole bike, replacing part by part. The title is clean, so it wasn't in a horrible wreck... just old, I guess. The engine appears to have been removed from the bike, cleaned, spray painted (??), and reinstalled. The frame has also been spray painted. The tires on the bike look almost brand new. They are Avon Azaro's sized 120/60-17 in the front and 160/60-17 in the rear. Judging from other posts in these forums those are HUGE tires and the bike is probably going to handle like poo. I'll try it for a bit and probably replace them with small width tires.

So the first thing we did was buy a new battery from NAPA and one of those Deltran Battery Tenders of Amazon. Charged it and installed it, along with the voltage r/r. There were two units, so we picked the one that looked like it was from a reseller or junkyard, since it fit with the "owner buying new-used parts to swap on" theme. Cleaned the cobwebs out of the airbox and installed the lower half. Air/fuel/oil filters are on order and haven't arrived yet, so I didn't put the whole airbox together. At that point we stuck the key in and turned on the electricity. The dash came to life! All the lights appear to be on, the taillight came on, brake light works, rear signals work! The front fairing and signals aren't installed, but everything appears wired up correctly!

So we turned it off, propped the gas tank up, added a couple gallons of gas, checked to make sure the fuel supply valve worked (it does), hooked up the line to the tank, and tried to start the engine. The starter immediately began spinning, no horrible noises erupted, but no ignition. We smell fuel, though I can't say if that's from pouring into the tank, or from the carburetors. There is a slight whumpwhumpwhump noise from the exhaust which I take to mean the pistons are compressing and the engine is turning.

My immediate guess is that the carbs need a good cleaning from 6 years of sitting there. But I figure I'll give the Clymers manual a chance and follow down their "Engine not firing" checklist. First up, check to make sure spark plugs are firing. While I'm in there I can make sure they're gapped correctly, clean, and replace if needed. Step two, fuel pump. I hear it's a little tricky to check, so I need to read up on how to make sure it's working. Then step three, yank them carbs and clean, clean, clean.

Ok,this is getting long enough... I'll keep updating as we get a chance to play with it more. Also, pics will be coming, but it won't be pretty, she's definitely a project bike

 

you get it running? sounds like a good start for a project bike.

 

I typical only get a chance to work on the bike Tuesday evenings and sometimes on the weekend. So there will probably be weekly updates. A 6 month old little boy eats up a tremendous amount of free time

So sticking with the plan from last week, Clymers says to check if the plugs are sparking. First thing we discovered is that it's hard to get a straight answer about what socket will remove the plugs on this bike. We saw one post that said an 18mm deep socket with thin walls will do it. Never heard of a thin walled socket... I take that to mean a 3/8th" drive as opposed to a 1/2" drive. Turns out I don't own any size in a 18mm. My socket set stops at 17 18mm is roughly 3/4th" but I didn't have anything that big either! Grrr... so at the suggestion of my father, we tried sticking a screw driver in the spark plug wire, holding the shaft near the frame, and looking to see if we could get a spark to jump from the shaft to the frame. It was a bit scary. Unfortunately (fortunately?) there was nothing. We tried all four wires and got bupkis.

With that failure, Clymers says to move on to the Spark Unit. Checked the recommended pins with a multimeter for continuity, everything looks good. Move up to the ignition coils. Harness end of each coil had continuity, plug ends checked out too. We checked first with the plug wires attached to the coils, then without the wires, just checking the coils themselves. One of the wires was screwed on so tight it took a liberal use of WD-40, some banging with a hammer, prying with a box cutter, and twisting with a rag wrapped set of pliers. 30 minutes and a slightly mangled spark plug wire screw cap later, it came loose. The other three were all removed by hand... very strange. All to find the same results as before. Next we checked the Pulse Generator. Continuity good there. Ignition switch, still good. Starter switch, good. Engine Run switch... flat line. Tested again. Reread to make sure I'm testing the right thing. Had my buddy test it. Went over to his working 87 Cane. His works. Back to mine. Nadda. Well... I think we found the problem! With the Engine Run switch set in the "run" position, there is no continuity between the two pins (black and black/white, I believe). So I pulled the right side switch unit off the handlebars and took it apart. Here's what I found:



It looks to me like the tab sticking up that's connected to the switch rocks back and forth between two metal contacts on the wire harness side (not pictured). However, my tab here has no metal innards to make the contact with the wire harness.

I'm off to find a new right side switch unit! Thanks Clymers for finding the issue without a carb rebuild!

 

I tried searching through these forums, CBR Extreme, and the shop manuals, but I can't seem to find a clear answer...

Can the left and right handlebar switches from other year and model CBR's be swapped onto the F1 without any other mods?

 

I may have a switch set for you, but it'll be Friday before I can look...a 2 and 4 year old eat up a lot of time too.

 

If you don't - let me know - I know I have one off the parts bike. A good cleaning would be in order for it though ... it's pretty dusty.

 

Ok! Sorry for the gap in posts, I was out of town for a week at a cousin's funera.. I mean, wedding

So, before the trip I had determined that the engine run/stop switch was missing the contact pad. I had a few people offer one up for sale (thanks Five, NorthernF1, and others!) but I lucked out and found one at a local junkyard right up the road from me. The night before I left for the trip I got it mounted and hooked up, but still no luck getting it started.

Fast forward to last night. Back from the trip and with new ideas we dug around in the bike some more. Decided to restart the electrical tests from the beginning, starting with the spark test. I had picked up a spare set of plugs, so I pulled the wires and inserted a spare and cranked the bike. Spark! All four wires were now producing sparks! Hooray for progress! So after some comparison between my bike and my buddy's running F1, I found the problem. The dang spark plug wires were on the wrong cylinders! Swapped them around to the correct places. Still nothing.

Ok, onto the next checklist. When spark checks out, start on fuel. I already had a new fuel filter, so we straight away replaced the old one. Checked that the petcock is releasing fuel (by just pointing the hose at a cup). So the next thing to check was the fuel pump. The Clymers manual has the most bizarre explanation for checking fuel pump operation. We tried what it said and there was no fuel coming out. We tried variations of what it said, and nothing. I have a spare that we hooked up using the manuals directions. Still nothing. Getting frustrated with the bizarre tests, we hooked everything back up as normal and just undid the fuel line from the carbs and pointed it at a cup. Tried to crank the bike and fuel comes out! Good enough for me.

Reconnect the fuel line and attempt to start the bike. Suddenly there's detonation in one of the cylinders! We can hear it trying to start! Adjust the choke and try again. A quick succession of detonations! One more time. The bike starts! OMG! It runs for about 4 seconds and dies. OMG it started! Another attempt and we get it to run for almost 10~15 seconds! The firing seems normal, not a super rough run. Small choke adjustments change the idle. I attempt to blip the throttle and it dies instantly. Start it again and it goes for another 5 seconds and dies. Progress indeed! At this point I need to take a break because I'm too excited to think properly.

We grab a drink and return to the bike. First order if we're going to have it run for more than 10 seconds is to check oil levels. Look good. Check coolant. WAY low. So we drain the little bit in there out, and refill the radiator. Install the airbox and a new filter (we'd been trying without the airbox at all... probably not the smartest thing). Attempt to start again. Detonation in one or two cylinders but doesn't start. Again. No detonation. A few more attempts, and nothing. We fiddle with the fuel lines, but there's nothing to really change. Still won't start.

Well... the fact that it ran for a bit is fantastic news! Seems like the next steps would be to check how fouled the plugs are, play around with the idle, mixture, throttle, and choke adjustments. And if none of that works, I'm guessing it might be time to pull the carbs and clean 'em.

Any suggestions?

 

Pull the carbs now and clean them, will probably be dirty from sitting for so long. This might be the cause of the no starting issue. It seems to be for a lot of others on this forum who have bought used bikes that have been sitting for a long time.

 

Billistic is right - pull the carbs and clean em up. Mine sat for I don't know how long before I got a hold of it. It runs now - but has a dead spot in it at the 1-2.5K rpm right now .... so another cleaning it'll be!

Glad to hear you had lift-off though - I know how excited you can get when you first hear it fire.

 

Are there any internals that are mandatory to replace when you clean the carbs? I assume I need to buy a gasket to go between the carbs and the head.

My guess is if I get it apart and something is damaged or rusted or beyond cleaning, I'll have to replace it, but I was wondering there's anything I can order ahead of time because it's a guaranteed (or pretty close to one) replacement item.

EDIT: Looking through the microfiche, and there doesn't appear to be a gasket between the carbs and the cylinder head?