New to SH and looking for advice
 

I found this 05 SH with 11k miles on it and was priced right, so I decided to buy it. My first street bike. I knew it wasn't running 100% when I bought it. Thought I'd take a chance. It sounded mechanically sound and ran fairly decent, so I filled up the tank and proceeded to see what I had. Didn't take long before it started skipping on front cylinder, stalling, and developed what sounded like cam chain noise as well. Glad I was only 1/4 mile from home, so I nursed it home and parked it.
That's when I got online and found this site, and I have to say there are some awesome guys on here that know their stuff. Got a manual and decided to see whats what.
First thing...the air filter looked to be the original one installed at factory, the vacuum canister filters were every where except where the were supposed to be, and plugs looked to be original as well, worn to a nub.

Second...pulled carbs, disassembled and cleaned..they were pretty bad.

Third...After hearing so many horror stories about cct failures, I decided to do that as well. I saw where Calitoz had modified oem ccts to manual. I followed his procedure, with one exception. I made a bushing and installed it between the screw piston and plunger before I put them together( made assembly more stable inside housing. I followed tdc procedure on both. No problem with install. Went ahead and did pair removal while I was digging that far in.
Put it back together with new plugs, and stock air filter, filled carbs and fuel lines, and she fired up second go around..sweet! let here warm up, never touched throttle(Make sure ccts are right first)

NOW..heres where I am a little concerned. When I initially set ccts, I set them so there was about a 1/4 inch of play between sprockets. When I fired her up there wasn't any chain noise to speak of, cold or warm., being unsure of proper adjustment I backed off locking nut and while running backed bolt slowly about a 1/8 or so and could feel chain vibration through the bolt. So I slowly tightened it back up till it disappeared and locked it down, did same for both cylinders.
Am I ok with that or does anyone have any advice on that????

I took her for a short test ride around the block, no chain noise, but still want to be absolutely sure. and WOW... what a difference. Sill need to sync carbs and do tps, but I can believe the vast improvement.

when i tightened mine, i rolled each to top dead center and tightened the adjusted finger tight and locked it down.i haven`t had to mess with since the install, about 7,000 miles.

You should be fine. Ideally, you want a slight chain slap when the motor's cold and then no noise when it warms up. But if you just set the 1/4" play and leave it at that, I've not seen or heard of it to be a problem (it's how I set mine up before I was confident enough to listen to noise). 1/4" play is how APE says to do it as well.

Whats up Tampahawk, I'm in the bay area too, so is Saige.

Thanks for the reasureance, I am sure they are fine, just never seen timing chain with that much slack in it. Makes me nervous. I have worked on hundreds of Honda outboard engines and their timing technology is much different, but everything else is very similar. This is first Honda motorcyle ever attempted to turn a wrench on, well first motorcycle period.
Thanks to the guys that took the time to post such awesome info, you were a huge help.:D

Right on supermarto, good to know there are others nearby.

What's up tampahawk,im in Largo.
There's a few of us around here,there's another guy in Tampa,goes by niterider,and met a guy today that is getting one here in st.pete
Maybe sometime in the near future,we all could meet up and do a bike night.
There's a quaker state here that does it every Wednesday.

I did Calitoz mod as well, I tightend by hand as tight as I could go, startted the motor and tried by hand again, it tightened a bit more then I used a wrench and turned it 1/4 turn more.. Seems ok to me but Calitoz has a differnet procedure all together that woudl make it tighter then this.. sorry I thought I had a copy of it but can't seem to find it.. I never did it as my bike was running well so I left it that way maybe PM him he's a great guy.

Saige, your talking about quaker state, over in pinnelas park yes? It would be cool to meet up with a few guys that own a hawk, mine is the first one I have even seen. Now that I seem to have got it running as it should, cant wait to see how it runs.

Yeah Caffine, when I put the first one in, it seemed real flimsy, so I took it out and added a bushing I fabricated on the piston shaft that really firmed it up alot. When I warmed up the motor, I loosened locking nut and you could really feel chain friction on head of bolt, I turned them in with fingers about a 1/8 or 1/4 or so and as soon as chain friction smoothed out I locked them down.

yes,the one in pinellas,i live 5 mins from there.
i have a busy couple of weeks,im hoping this week will start getting back to normal.
we can meet up sometime soon.if you need any help with the bike,let me know,if im free,i will come up.

Havent had this thing long, wish I would of looked at it closer when I bought it. 520 alumimnum rear sprocket, havent looked at front, and a 530 chain. Can't believe I missed that one. How unsafe to run??

i might say,its not too bad,but its aluminum and the hawks eat it for breakfast.
never a good idea to to do 520 with 530,too much side to side motion.
i may have a oem rear sprocket,it should be in good shape.if so,you could have it until you get new chain and sprockets.

Yeah, The guy that owned this before me did some really bad and stupid stuff to this bike. After a little maintenance and fixing some of his redneck engineering, It's in way better shape than I previously thought. That aluminum sprocket has seen better days, and the front is a 520 as well,,grrr. Don't know tooth count, rear is a 43. Chain seems to be in decent shape, so the budget plan for right now is swap out sprockets. Should be able to get by with that for awhile. So, if you have one laying around you don't need, that would be awesome.

When I reinstalled my cams and oem CCT on rear cylinder, I had no (or minimum) slack in chain between cams sprockets. Was that wrong?

No, you put back in the auto CCT, which has a constant tension on the chain from a spring. That tension can't be matched with a locking bolt (no spring), so the bolt is adjusted to give a slight amount of slack to account for metal expansion and different forces on the chain.

Tampahawk put in a homemade manual CCT, so he needs to adjust it like a manual one. Auto cct's don't have adjustment so there's nothing you could do about it anyway ;)

Well I do know that the CCT doesn't account for slack BETWEEN the cams so I started to wonder about my work and settings.

Welcome TAMPAHAWK68! I had an '05. Really like the color. These bikes are great and once you get 'em straight, they are not that bad to maintain IMHO. As you already found out, the folks on here are great as far as helping out and there is more knowledge on this forum than most of us will ever need. I like that you added a bushing to the CCT "auto-to-manual" conversion. That is a great idea. Sounds like you are on the right track with your bike.

If you search a topic, you will most likely find that someone has already asked the question or had the same problem, but every once in a while someone's bike becomes interesting with a quirk that needs the collective wisdom given on this site.

Read all the KB articles and complete the requisite items and you'll have them checked off the list. Keep us posted as your bike continues to improve!

I haven't owned a bike in over 10 years. Last one was a 03 meanstreak and this nice lady turned it into a pretzel and me into hamburger. I like color too, when saw pic of it, had to check it out. Was looking for something different. Seems to be solid bike, havent had to put any money into it yet, except maintenance items. New chain and sprockets are top priority right now. Guy that had it before me was running 520 sprockets with 530 chain.

hey,i found the rear sprocket,i thought i still had the front too,but no luck on that.
pm'ed

Thanks to Saige, he had a spare rear sprocket lying around he gave me, Finally got that pos aluminum one off, and after pulling front cover, the front sprocket is actually a 530..(brain fart). Chain has plenty of adjustment left in it too. cool.
Went through carbs cleaned and reinstalled, had to set pilots out to 2 3/4 to almost 3 turns before it would start and idle smooth.
Still havent synced them yet, and want to adj tps after sync.
Took pair valve off. no cost mod, had caps for valve covers and just took hose coming from airbox and pushed it up on pair valve mount, looped around nicely.
Did Calitoz oem cct mod, with an addition of a stabilizer bushing on the piston shaft.
new air filter, and plugs.
Runs awesome now, couldn't be happier with it. runs smooth, must of got carbs really close, but still going to sync when got time.
The only issue is that it runs rather warm, fan doesnt come on till 222 and shuts off at 219. Consistent at running between 217 and 223, should I be concerned? Or be happy with it?

See my reply in your other topic, that sounds normal and exactly how my fans have been running since I bought mine in 2007. Stop N go traffic, never had a problem yet.

My biggest concern was how quickly it got to 200+ degrees and pretty much stayed above that consistently. Checked radiator cap, and coolant flow after it warmed up today, all seemed good, so decided to change coolant, already had some, so why not? didn't know how old old coolant was..mo better now. Even though it was 10 degrees cooler today, could tell vast improvement.

Giday Tampahawk68..
Nice to meet another relatively new Superhawk owner. I too just got mine recently (although in Aus its a Firestorm). Mine too is an 05 with 24k on the clock from one be it slightly neglectful owner... the thing was never serviced apart from oil changes, *gulp!*
Subsequent to the ownership changes I'm going through the process of assembling a shopping/mod list.
Being completely stock changes like jetting, tps', cans etc should be easy to not differences.
Any enough on my story.. Looking forward to checking in on the forum and seeing how things are progressing for you.

I havent done any significant mods, other than eliminating pair valve, and adjusting tps, just maintenance and fluid changes, undoing some bad fixes previous owner hacked up. Now I have a smooth running machine, ride it every day all for less than 120 bucks..saige was a big help..nice guy.