honda CB400F

purple haze

rufus — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:22:04 +0000

another nice clean honda CB400F for inspiration

clean red n black cb400f

rufus — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 18:05:03 +0000

one of the first things to break, sort of.

rufus — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 03:48:10 +0000

the other day. i tried to start the honda. i put the key in and turned it, nothing happened. no lights went on? i thought maybe a wire got messed up when i was changing the headlight. or something? i checked the fuse. i checked all the wires. checked the battery. everything seemed fine. so it all lead to the ignition switch. the thing you put the key in. that’s what it’s called, right? yeah, the ignition.

took the cover off to see what i could see. nothing under there but the indicator bulbs. nothing to mess with there

i unplugged the two wires going to the ignition. connected them together, and the lights went on!

so there’s two wires going into the thing. and i think 5 terminals. so i tried plugging them in other terminals. and well. . .. . . it worked! that wasn’t so bad. just glad i realized it might be the ignition before it drove me crazy and i started pulling apart wiring or something.

new headlight and brackets

rufus — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 05:27:15 +0000

the giant headlight brackets i had. i never really liked em. they’re too long and too straight.

one of my favorite parts of the bike. the wiring mess inside the headlight. a wonderful tangled mess of wires, all about to break and short out and fall out of their connections.

new black headlight brackets and a new halogen light bulb. hopefully i’ll be able to see a little more at night.

new bracket, old bracket.

and the new halogen bulb in the housing. you can see it’s a slight bit smaller than the original bulb. i think i can use some plastic or rubber lining stuff to fill in the gap and keep things water tight.

turn signals on the new brackets. the new brackets have larger holes but they still work for the turn signals with the use of a large washer.

does this look better? hard to say? light’s pointing down too much. but i think it looks better. the one thing i found out during all this, is that the original headlight bulb was not bad at all. both low beam and hi beam worked fine. it’s the switch that’s not working right. i do think this is all a little better than it was before. better looking and a brighter light now. not a total waste of time.

some 400 four inspiration

rufus — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:35:36 +0000

summer time past

rufus — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 19:07:28 +0000

this summer the CB400F has been from san francisco to reno and back, to willits and back + other trips up the coast and around the city. with hardly any work done to the engine, this bike is surprisingly reliable. but i guess it’s not that surprising. it a honda motorcycle. the only problems i had were a burnt out headlight, and burnt out tail light. both easy to fix on the road. get a new tail light bulb and just switch to hi beam for the headlight. other than that, the bike runs great. yet it’s still dripping and leaking like crazy. one day i need to take the engine out and replace all the broken bolts and gaskets. one day. but right now i just want to ride it.

photos from skatofix

rufus — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:53:49 +0000

cb400f photos from a friend in italy skatofix

another year of motogp

rufus — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 05:05:14 +0000

more old news, another year at motogp laguna seca. didn’t ride the honda there this year. i took my daughter instead.

an amazing photo captured by my friend jeff winterberg of jorge lorenzo’s unfortunate high side on saturday. see more photos here

and mission motors of san francisco takes first place in the electric class! interesting for me, not only cause i’m into electric bikes, but because my friend katie’s brother works there too.

aftan my daughter and i by the corkscrew.

watch the official motogp video rewind laguna seca

seat

rufus — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 17:37:28 +0000

seat work. the seat on the super sport is not the best. originally it’s not the best. it’s loose and it wobbles around. and that’s just the way it’s made. too bad. but this seat i have is even worse than the original. it is the original seat, but it has an aftermarket seat cover on it, that makes it look even fatter than it really is. + the seat pan is cracked in a few places. so i want to fix it up without spending any money.

originally it looks like this. not horrible, but too big and puffy

cracked spring mount thing for locking it. and crack in the seat pan

more cracked seat pan

you can see the lines from the original seat cover in the foam. that was a much better seat cover.

so i forgot to take pictures of the foam cutting and things. but here now is the finished seat. no money spent, a little time, not much. all the cracks in the seat pan a welded up, i cut the foam a little thinner and lower and put the same cover back on it. now at least it is a little better looking, slightly lower, a bit more of a bump in the back, and it was easy to do, and i didn’t have to buy anything.

big bike, small bike, the honda cb400f and the derbi magnum. both with the same seat modifications. experiments for what became the puch racer seat, but that’s old news. i gotta glue that derbi magnum seat down soon, so it looks a bit better

island days in the summer on the california coast

rufus — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 21:16:24 +0000