79-80 cb650 actually have pretty good stock-oem carbs IMO: 29mm bore, mechanical slide and accelerator pump. However, if yours are getting shitty and want a nice upgrade, brand new keihin crs29 smoothbore race carbs are the way to go. 

If you have the shitty 81-82 constant velocity carbs, bummer for you. Def upgrade to the keihin crs.

Benefits of keihin crs smoothbore carbs

• Brand new. Still made today. Every and any part is available still
• Every single circuit is tunable to a fine degree 
• They’re not too difficult to tune
• You’ll prob get a few horsepower assuming you tune them properly
• Choke is on the carb body so no more shitty cb650 pull choke near handlebars
• Nothing beats brand spanking new carbs… Best upgrade for any bike IMO

Keihin crs29 jetting for cb650

• 115 main jet
• 220 main air jet
• 68 slow jet
• yy6 needle – middle
• Air screw 1 turn out 

If you have a 4-1 exhaust, and you’re basically at sea level, above is the jetting I recommend to get you in the ballpark… to then fine tune.

Things to note

1. Intake spigots need to match up: if you have 79-80 you’ll want Keihin intake spigot number 020-024 (below pic) for a Suzuki gs850. Needs to be long enough to clear the petcock as seen in below photo. Also need to shave off 1mm from the end that sits into the intake boot so it seals properly.
2. Pod filters won’t really fit. They hit the frame on cylinders 1 and 4. So I’m running the velocity stacks that come with the carbs.
3. You’ll need a different “pull” throttle cable. Use the “push” from the CB650, and then buy a “pull” from a 78 Kawasaki kz1000. KZ cable is slightly longer looking but the cable/housing ratio is what you want.
4. Where the cables thread into the carb holder…You’ll need to bend the tabs up and to the left a hair, so the cables clear the frame of the motorcycle. Seen in below pic.
5. Get a pair of new rubber intake boots. Might as well, right.

Conclusion

Yea, if you have a 4cyl jap bike… These are the best carbs you can pick up, hands down. I also have a set on a 74 Kawasaki z1 and I love them. Don’t put carbs on your bike that are too big bore. Some people upgrade to the Mikuni RS34, which are too big. For a 4cyl, I love the Keihin CRS, and for a twin or single cylinder, I like the Mikuni VM.

These carbs will work great on any 70s Honda CB 500, 550, 650, 750 4cyl.

However, on 500, 550, you should run the keihin crs26. Slightly smaller bore will work better.

Every year towards late August a handful of rare souls converge together to wreak havoc on the streets of Brooklyn, like some horrid natural phenomenon emerging from the sea to consume an entire city. The sheer anticipation of the solid one-night rumble attached to your motorcycle, surrounded by the sharpest cavalcade of your most trusted friends, is almost enough to say fuck it and sit at Perry’s Place in Kensington for the remainder of the night. Sense kicks in before another shot is poured and we round up the men, fire up the oil and head north in search of any blood that gets in our way.

Once on the interstate super highway, any driver to do us wrong finds a deluge of vulgar acts in their headlights, essentially making the highway a safer place for the next guy on two wheels, who may find himself in the path of the same now enlightened driver. This display of road justice may include performing sexual acts with your motorcycle tank while slowing the ignorant driver to a crawl.

After battling through heavy traffic on the BQE, we arrived at our destination at the Works Engineering shop. Now this is no back-alley, ram-shackled hut, rather, a highly-fortified, monstrous structure where we can hide from the creatures that appear after a 3:45am last call at the Matchless bar. Somewhere I had stopped taking pictures as I became too diluted with whiskey and beer, but I managed to snap off a few photos in the shop as our friend and host, Ray, entertained with new stories.

No one expects the morning to feel good. The only thing you can do is play catch-up with the weird sauce for the few hours missed while your brain rested. We rolled our bikes out from the catacombs of Works and parked them against the curb, while onlookers of the new york vintage motorcycle show took pictures and rallied down north 14th street. It is a much better show when you emerge from the inside looking out, smelling of road grease, stale booze and a wretched back ache from the floor/roof you made a bed that night—It’s the only way to prepare for this motorcycle show and looks more authentic than some wide-eyed gawker. Eventually we set out for food down Bedford Ave., looking as if some brutes were set loose from their cage. Shirtless Mike made sure to carry our strange vibes to the fullest exposing would be brunch eaters to a full chest of hair.

Somewhere around 1:30, I scouted out Manhattan in search of some threads and found no traffic to be had from Brooklyn to the tunnel (our exit strategy for later that day). I made my way back to the show and met the rest of our group.

After “looking hard” for the rest of the show, we decided to pack our remaining energy into the trip home over the Williamsburg Bridge, across Canal St., through the Holland tunnel, over the detoured Pulaski Skyway, down route one and into PA for a toll-less venture back to our philth down south.

(Any film person know where to get Seattle Film Works rolls developed?)

Northern PA. I had just got my 550 on the road (still had the stock bars on it) that morning and took off with Ed for some renegade camping.

Directions to Aaron’s wedding in Ohio taped to my tank. I had some cycle trouble the day the crew left Philly so I spent the night in the shop getting it taken care of and took off the next day. 500+ miles in 2 days with my first night of solo renegade camping.

Ryan and Dana.

Ricky livin’ free.

A few months later he found a 1971 CB500 in decent condition.

Luckily Ryan has a big 2 car garage which made it easy to get some work done on one of the rainy days.

We spent a solid day giving the bike a full tune up. Cam chain, valve clearance, points, timing, carb clean, and a general cleaning. The head gasket was leaking slightly so we decided to re-torqued the head by cracking each bolt and then torquing it to the highest spec (~18ft lbs). Heard some mixed feeling on this but thought it was worth a try.

I traveled out to Chicago with my lady who was very patient with the wrenching so once we got it fired up we took the cycle out all around the city.

We hit up a bunch of places including Intelligensia coffee house which is a well known spot. They individually brew each cup of coffee. It was awesome.

We parked next to a burly CB750 while eating lunch at the Chicago Diner. Best seitan ruben sandwhich I’ve ever had.

My god. An abandoned airfield! Holy shit! Other then a few fisherman and some other motorcyclist I had the place to myself. What a great place to test out the cb500 full throttle (which I haven’t gotten to do yet). After taking some passes to make sure there weren’t any crazy bumps, I went for it, and I’m happy to say the 500 didn’t bog at all and had no problem hitting 100+

What a great ending to the weekend.

Well guys, we’ve had all winter to get something done, except for Ed who gets to enjoy summer back to back to back. The warm weather signals us to make those final adjustments and go for a test ride.

Stopped by Brian’s house Saturday for some cold beers and a lesson on the hybrid tacos of Southern Texas. Brian was dusting off the ol’ 63 Pan and rewiring the brake switch. Needless to say, we wrapped up there, bought a case of Genesse and ate tacos for dinner.

After a day of piecing the 500/4 motor together, a few of us arrived just in time to watch Jason McElroy fuel up his freshly built BSA and make a couple dozen flybys.

When Erik Omland’s not busting up hipster fights at the Barbary, he’s wrenching right next door to Jason’s shop. He’s been working on this local Tiger110 that’s in beautiful condition.

End of the weekend and I have a near finished motor and freshly painted helmet. Starting ‘er up tonight.

As much as I fucking hate Winter, if it didn’t keep me off the bike as much as it did, I’d never get any work done.

My cb500 is almost 100% finished up. I got my new set of Avon road runners on the other day, man what a difference new tires make!

I was still having issues with my clutch, it felt like shit, and it turns out my clutch push rod was broken. The clutch adjuster was also cracked. I got a new OEM clutch adjuster from bikebandit.com

CB500 clutch push rods are very very very hard to find on Ebay, but knowing honda double overs a lot of their parts, I figured another model must fit. It took a TON of googling but I found out that the cb500 uses the same clutch push rod as the cb450/cl450/cb500t, which made it much easier to find one ($20 on ebay). For future reference here is the part number – 22850-323-000

I had to take off the right side cover and then the clutch basket (the 4 bolts shown above) to get the broken push rod out, but it gave me a good excuse to change the oil and oil filter. I also put in a new air element. Man the bike is feeling awesome! So I rode it to the beach!

So I’ve been working away on my cb500. I got it back in November and at that point it had been sitting for 22 years. After a bunch of work I got it running, what a great feeling to fire up a bike after it hasn’t seen action for that long! Here is everything I have done to it so far:

• I stripped off the sissy bar, crash bar, fog lights, and chain guard.
• I flushed the fluids and replaced the battery with a new Gel battery.
• I rebuilt the carbs with carb kits. I also had the tip of a jet broken off in the body of the carb. I had to drill / pick it out carefully.
• The tank that came with the bike was completely rusted out. In order to get off the petcock, I had to drill out the bolts holding it on. Needless to say i trashed that tank (to bad, I loved!!!!! the paint job… just kidding!)
• I found a great OEM orange tank off Ebay for $85 including shipping. Its not mint, but pretty awesome. I’m calling my bike The General Lee from now on.
• I rebuilt the petcock with a rebuild kit, also put on new gas lines.
• As you can see from the one photo, all the brake fluid dried up so I had to do a MC rebuilt (once again using a rebuilt kit). I also added a stainless steal front line, man the front brake feels amazing now!
• I decided to try something different on Adam’s suggestion and went for flipped upside down euro bars. Unfortunately I can’t really get them to rotate into the position I want to due to clearance on the triple tree. I’m rocking them for right now, but have a set of clubmans waiting to go on.
• I got a set of cb360 handlebar mounts and used them to replace the “idiot” panel. It really cleans up the front end (thanks to mick for this idea)
• I used some extra mounts Adam had to mount the front turn signals straight to the headlight bracket.
• I also got a $30 seat cover off Ebay and redid the seat. The cover was surprisingly awesome for 30 bucks. I used sand paper to smooth out the foam. Putting on a seat cover seems like it should be a piece of cake, but it takes time. I learned this on my cb360 seat.
• I repainted the side panels, which was a bitch because I had to sand out the stupid pattern that was on there.

So after all of that the bike is looking good and running pretty awesome. The only issue I’m having is a slight amount of smoke out of the #1 pipe. I think it is either a carb sync issue, or the fact that the small drain hold on the pipe seems to be clogged, so maybe its just water vapor burning off. Test riding the bike in really cold weather doesn’t help isolate the smoke. I haven’t done a compression test yet, but I’m pretty positive that’s not the issue.

Things I still have left to do:

• A full tune up
• I got a set of Avon tires that I just need to find time to put on
• My clutch push rod is broken, which is making the clutch feel like shit. Cb500 clutch rods are super hard to find, but from everything I have read, it seems its the same as the cb450 so I gotta pick up one of those on Ebay. I also have to replace the clutch adjust (pictured) as it also cracked.

All in all I’m pretty stoked, the project is coming along and I think I should have everything finished in time for the nice weather. I love the look of the 500/550 stock, so as of right now I don’t plan on doing much to the bike as I already think its rad as shit.

The clutch adjuster that needs to be replaced. I had to tap this out, because it was stuck in the clutch cover.

…and incase you forgot what it looked like when I got it, here is a “before” photo. The black and white doesn’t show off the red and sparkle silver color scheme to well. If you say you like this look better I’ll punch you in the face.

I took off work and spent 4 days in the “Jankyington” garage. We burned enough wood to build a house in Kensington, which is to say, a fair amount of wood. Together with the Yerkes brothers, a lifetime supply of Sly Fox and a killer high from aircraft stripper, we had a Martin Luther King Jr. Day Weekend no one would ever forget.

I began tearing down the top-end of my 500 with the help of a Clymer book. Essentially I’m doing the same rebuild Ed did with the 650, so I’ll hold off on the details during this stage. I’m taking it to the same machine shop, Mar Automotive, when the rebuild kit comes in.

Ricky and Dana gutted the engine from the Baja 350 project.

On day 2 I bought a bench grinder for the shop, so as we tore parts off, everything got a wire-wheel treatment and high-gloss polish. This was quite possibly the best investment I’ve ever made.

An old-fashioned steel wool polish.

Dana rips out the carbs on the 200T for a cleaning.

Thanks to Mick for the seat. We were almost convinced it was the ugliest cafe seat until I took a saw to it and trimmed more than half of it off. A very productive weekend. I’ll update as the 500 progresses.

Below is my new 1973 cb500 four… its been sitting (in garage) since 88′ so its going to need some serious TLC, but overall its in pretty good shape. Everything looks like its there and fixable, except for prehaps the tank. I’m pretty stoked to get working on this… and man look at the awesome paint job it came with!

See y’all at the BP.