…was super tall from Honda. I could barely touch the ground flat-foot on it!!!

So, I found a seat on eBay that was real slick looking that was said to fit the 1970-1974 cb450. This is the dude’s eBay store:
http://stores.ebay.com/hondaclassic31

He def has some real sick seats for a lot of different bikes. Anyway, to make a long story short, I ordered the seat for the 450, and then he emailed me a few days later and said that he was mistaken in his eBay post, and the seat won’t fit 73-74. So, I cancelled my order, printed out pictures of what the seat looked like, and brought my stock seat to the same upholstery shop that did my cb650 seat. They charged me $175 which is $75 less than the eBay dude. This is their shop:
http://businessdirectory.philly.com/4548397/J-and-J-Auto-Seat-Covers-Philadelphia-PA

They’re located in N.E. philly.

I think the seat turned out great. I wanted it to look like it could’ve came from Honda this way, because the 450 is all stock other than clubmans, so I didn’t want a seat that looked out of place, but I wanted to sit a few inches lower.

Stock seat: 

eBay seat:

New seat:

time to get the cycles packed away in the garage, and away from the outside shit…

- 1979 cb650
- 1973 cb450

looking emo on the cb450. This was when my bro-in-law still had the 450. The summer he first got it. Now he has a sick Ducati monster.

So… after taking the engine apart it was apparent that we couldn’t diagnose the cylinder head properly. The cb450 in the 70′s has a really weird cylinder head design. Instead of having valve springs, it has what are called “torsion bars” which hit the valve to open it, and also, hit the valve to shut it. Really weird…

Also, each piston has 3 rings on it… bottom is oil ring, and top  2 are compression rings. So… the middle ring on each piston was “stuck”. Meaning that it didn’t have any free play in it.

So… I took the cylinder head to a specialty engine machine shop here in the N.E. philly, and explained the rings. They told me that a ring should never be stuck like that, and that’s why oil is burning. Also, they told me not to fuck with the cylinder head. So, I took their advice, didn’t fuck with the head. Ordered new OEM pistons and rings.

We re-assembled the engine on a tuesday night. Then put the engine back into the frame on saturday.

After several kicks, it fired right up and runs awesome. No more smoking. Did the timing and points. Rode it around fairmount park for a bit on sunday. It runs awesome!!!

I’m psyched. Successfully did our first real engine work.