Free* Honda Project: GL500 Interstate

This makes me want to redo an old bike.  With what time, well I have no idea......

In reply to Thinkkker :

The whole no-time thing has really hit hard this past month! But, as long as I get at least 1 small thing done every day I only feel like a small piece of crap for it haha

Update time!

First off, my R1 fork conversion had nearly no steering angle between the GL500 frame stop and interference with the tank and radiator shroud. I've since removed the shroud until I can figure out how I want to trim it, but the tank still needed to be moved back an inch or so. Drilling the frame here was super hard, but I was able to make it work and ream it out with a 10mm diameter Bastard file to get...
 

I promise that the bolt and original rubber mounts are parallel in both the Y and Z directions. The photo lies!
I dusted off the TIG, and my own skills, and got a good enough weld and trimmed the bolt to match. My argon flow was a little screwy for this weld.

Since the whole bike is getting rewired, and the original key mount is gone, I grabbed a CM400 ignition switch and fuel cap to have the matching key. This also makes for an easy wiring job with the X21 system really only needing the switched ignition power so I can cut out the rest of switched ignition wires later.

I made a rough template and cut/welded a bracket onto the frame rail to mount the key underneath the tank and above the right intake.

I'll be back later with the grinder to smooth things out here 
This is how it's sitting now. I'm going to be raising the rear ride height about an inch and replacing the dangling "honda digital rectifier" from 4-into-1 with an NWT Cycletronic unit this weekend. Also decided to start out with a single front rotor. The bike has lightened up significantly (I can lift it and move it around without terrible effort), pad area is doubled with just one R1 caliper, and the rotor diameter has gone from 240mm to 320mm. Worst case, I make up a second line and install the left side components but I doubt it'll be an issue.

With the future addition of rearsets, I'll also be replacing the brake lever setup with a cable.

Hey just a heads up on the coil on plug part of the project - Yamaha 450 motocross coils fit perfectly, are quite a bit shorter, and the rubber boot fits the CX heads. Something to consider, part number 5TA-82310-10-00. I'll post some pics if I can remember to grab one when I get home.

Bike looks good! I had to do the same thing moving the tank back on mine, makes for a fairly long stretch to the bars as the seat also moved back. Not uncomfortable, just ends up making the pegs feel like they are really far forwards if you're tall.

Your key solution looks a lot like mine, mine is just in front of the cylinder head. The CX front engine mount piece has a tubular cross brace in it that a key cylinder fits perfectly in, right above that silver bolt that holds the radiator on.

In reply to gearheadE30 :

Thanks for the tip! The YZ450 coils do indeed look about an inch shorter, though I'm going to get it running on these CBR coils before chasing shorter ones.

Hopefully the reach won't be too bad with the slightly elevated bars, and my rearsets should move the controls about 4 inches rearward.

Here are a couple of shots of where the relocated ignition and choke (undocumented) sit with the tank in place. The choke cable was made by sourcing a replacement and shortening it by like 80%.

!!!TOOL TIP!!! If you're ever modifying control cables for a motorcycle, or any vehicle really, you are doing yourself a disservice if you don't use a solder pot. I got a couple of ends to work with a torch, but mostly wasted a lot of money buying more cable kits. Cut the cable, throw some flux in the ferrule, and dip for ~10 seconds. 

Further activities related to the tank. The rear mount moved back an inch sits off the middle frame cross member, but only just.  I threw the bushing into the tank and threaded a nut on the bolt, tacked, welded.  That ain't goin' nowhere...

I've gotten to the point where I have everything to do the subframe. This is the abbreviated stock subframe; keep in mind that there was over a foot more bike behind this before I chopped it!

Measured 8 times, cut twice.  Turns out the bottom frame area near the swingarm is several sections welded together and it took a bit of hand sawing to tackle with the swingarm installed. The top tubes are also double-walled, it turns out... these 4 pieces of frame were unexpectedly heavy!

I've got a rear hoop "for cafe racers" with a tight radius 180° bend and long legs.  That gets me a long enough seat that it doesn't look like a bobber.  I'm still planning out the support legs, but the blue tape should give a good idea.

"Shop oven"............Nice!

Looks good!

I know not a priority, but here's that coil pic I promised:

Wow, very nice! Maybe I do make it a priority now haha.

Dang you're really making me want to tear into my CB650 and do it right. Nice work so far. I love the comstars, hopefully you can get them to work up front. 

Got my new dash in the mail last weekend. I went with a single gauge tach/speedometer from KOSO. It came with a ridiculous amount of documentation and wiring, and is only a couple of inches thick. This should replace all the gauges and warning lights on the stock bike! The 500 won't really rev over 10k (for long) so this is perfect.

I was out camping this weekend, so as I was unpacking yesterday I let myself get a little distracted and installed the new temperature sensor. OEM Honda on the left, new Koso sender in the middle, and the M16-1/8 NPT adapter on the right.

Made some progress on my battery box setup. This should hide underneath quite nicely! It also holds my starter solenoid for a tidy package.
 

So I mentioned needing to increase the rear ride height a little bit... Decided to disassemble the ProLink and designed some ears to fit the R1 shock (naturally, drama has ensued from the front linkage bolt being seized, to be addressed later since it pivots smoothly). Found some thick steel kicking around, so I worked my maths and welded up some mounts that follow the OE linkage arc while raising the static height ~1". I feel any remaining ± can be adjusted with preload on this shock.
Here it is welded and blasted.

And back home painted...

That battery box looks nice but being metal I would suggest placing some styrofoam or similar material in there to guard against terminal to box contact if that strap fails in some way.  Belt + suspenders sort of thinking I guess.

pres589 (djronnebaum) said:

That battery box looks nice but being metal I would suggest placing some styrofoam or similar material in there to guard against terminal to box contact if that strap fails in some way.  Belt + suspenders sort of thinking I guess.

That's a good point! I'm hoping it will be addressed by a couple of things: The aluminum tie-down is bolted into the battery and the box, there is a rubber chunk holding the battery and solenoid as press-fit, and I'm removing those terminals from the battery so there won't be a physical manner for the positive side to touch metal unless things get REALLY out of hand.

She's got spark!!  I got my wiring cleaned up for testing of the NWT Cycletronic controller and got everything verified working with one hiccup. On my second activation of the turn signals, I freed the magic smoke from the controller, and now the signal lights are off and the dash is showing they're constantly illuminated no matter the switch position. Doing some more investigation here...  I'm very happy to be seeing spark from the COP setup on the first try though!  I'd have gone for a startup except the petcock I have is a 14mm thread, and the tank is 18mm 

I also received a few new eye-candy/performance parts from Rejuve Motorcycles in the UK while I was gone on vacation; a radiator grille and their CNC-bent stainless headers (both shown below on the owner's bike). I'm not sure how much I like the grille yet, but the OEM grille is broken plastic and interferes with the forks while turning.

The OEM headers are double-wall and present a restriction in the flow at the port, while the Rejuve version is smooth and slightly larger than the port, offering some favorable reversion assistance.

More eye candy

Got mine running again after a whole bunch of updates, including the stick coils. Unfortunately, I missed a critical point in my research as I was very ignorant of the difference between CDI and TCI coil control. Stock coils are CDI (at least on my '80), and my research led me to believe these Denso stick coils are as well. Turns out, they aren't - they are TCI coils. The bike halfway runs, but not well at all. Very weak spark.

I've got the Ignitech controller on my bike, this setup doesn't work. I think I saw you've got the Rae-San. I believe he's got a version that does work based on his website. Just something to check as you're pulling it all together.

Of course I've cut off all the mounts for the stock coils and put other things in their place, so there's no easy way to go back now. Oops.

In reply to gearheadE30 :

I believe the main difference in the CDI Rae-San and the COP-ready one is the COP version has a much shorter dwell time and the software is written for tighter control of this.  Are you able to reduce the dwell time on the Ignitech module?  I've got a couple of the YFZ450 coils en-route, so I can plug them in and compare with the CBR coils (they seem to have strong spark).

The biggest issue trying to run these COP's is that the engine runs wasted spark, so at redline on the '500 that's 20k ignitions per coil which seems a bit excessive and generates a lot of heat. I would REALLY like to figure out a way to run this hall trigger off the camshaft...

Another update: She runs!  I got the bike to start up yesterday and set the carb balance.  With a stable idle and eager throttle blips, I'll consider this a win. I've got to probably lean out the idle, as the plugs were pretty black, but I'm somewhat confused on how to tune the CV carbs (the manual doesn't say much). Figure I'll get the controls buttoned up and take it for a ride to see if my jetting is correct for the altitude and the pod filters/headers. Still having some issues with the electrical controls; everything works now with a replacement X21 unit except for the left turn signals.

​ 

In reply to Parker with too many Projects :

I think there are a few issues with the Ignitech, or at least the one I have. Mine is for CDI, so the coil is grounded and the ignition provides a high voltage signal. There also is no dwell adjustment. The TCI version of the Ignitech does have dwell adjustment and can run the coils (+12V supply, ground switched by the module), but doesn't work with the CX500's CDI pulse generators from what I can see.

Yeah, the wasted spark thing is a bummer but I think that's how they run on their OEM applications as well. For example on the Yamaha 450 application, it only has a crank trigger and redlines north of 10k rpm. My 990 Adventure uses a slightly longer version of the same coil, and it also only has a crank trigger and has a limiter just shy of 10k rpm. So while it is a lot, that suggests to me that the coils can handle it.

By the way, the ignitech has a few interesting features that allow it to run sequential ignition - one option, if there is enough crank trigger resolution and you have a single cylinder, can look at the rate of change of engine speed to see if it is on the compression stroke or not. The other option allows you to add a MAP sensor to one of the intake runners to sense engine position based on intake vacuum pulses to infer cam position. I don't know how well those features work, but they're both pretty interesting.

Glorious success!

i can't believe how good looking your bike is becoming.  The first pic in the thread is so gross but it is looking so cool...

In reply to jfryjfry :

Thanks!  I'm getting pretty excited to ride it soon.

I had a few more parts show up... Following Gearhead's suggestion, I swapped the CBR coils for YFZ450 coils. Overall when swapping the lower boots and the shorter height of the coils, it removed 3/4" of height here. CBR1000 left side, YFZ450 right side:

And the results:

Sitting now, waiting for the proper density seat foam 

Quite a few updates, but not a lot of photos to post yet.  I've been in the midst of an Android->iPhone conversion and it's really been just awful for keeping up with things.

Anyway, I got my custom rearsets put together! The front pegs were a bit far forward to make things comfortable, so I picked up a set of TEC universal rearsets to get started. 

Second I had to chop off the end of the (bent) stock shift arm. The arm pivots along a longitudinal axis unlike most bikes, so a contraption had to be created to change fore-aft motion into down-up motion. Snip Snip!

I welded a heavy steel mount to the frame on the lower left motor mount. Turns out that Speedway Motors is the supplier for doing this linkage on the cheap. I picked up a sprint car throttle bellcrank with a center bearing, multiple rod ends, and a swaged tube with rh/lh threads for a little under $40. Drilled and tapped the end of the stock shift arm, and voila! I've still got a little bit of adjustment and trimming to do, but this is the effective final product.

Also had time to mount up my new brake reservoir, compared with the stock R1 reservoir.