August 2020 Lancaster, PA to Elmira, NY on the 550

My girlfriend has family up near Elmira, NY and back in August of 2020 I took the 77 CB550K up this way. Total trip was about a 4 hour ride. Her mom suggested going up parts of route 54 to route 14 and route 220. It was a pretty good ride. I didn't take a lot of pictures, but did manage to get a picture of the bike loaded with goodies before I headed off.





Here was all the stuff I had stuffed in those bags:

* Spare points plate and points advancer.
* Spare voltage regulator.
* 4 new spark plugs.
* Spare rear and turn signal bulbs.
* Spare fuses.
* 22mm and 24mm for tires (missing in my tool kit).
* RPM/Dwell meter.
* Timing light.
* Butane powered soldering pencil, solder and flux.
* Misc wire.
* 1/4" socket wrench with assorted metric sockets from 8mm-14mm.
* Needle nose vice grips.
* 1 Quart Honda GN4 10W40.
* Spare tubes for front and rear.
* Used air filter (put a new one on from David Silver Spare's before I left).
* Four 16g CO2 cartridges and CO2 cartridge tool.
* 2 tire irons.
* Carb cleaner.
* Electrical contact cleaner.
* Cam lube.
* 85W gear oil poured into one of those tiny 2 stroke oil containers. For chain lube.
* Paper for cleaning the points.

Luckily, I didn't need any of this.

That's serious preparedness, which is generally when you don't actually use any of it. Well done. Total contradiction to the weekend I went from Brandon FL to Talladega AL to see the 200 with 3 friends, myself and one other on CB750s and my cousin and another friend on CB500s back in the fall of '73. We basically took chain lube and our factory tool kits, maybe a quart of oil. And like typical teenagers on what was then high horsepower bikes, we blasted our way there and fortunately didn't have any mechanical issues or even get a ticket.

Oh, I probably could have done better. Didn't have bullet connectors with a crimp tool. Probably would have been good to bring just in case something failed in the headlight bucket. But, I did have a soldering pencil so I could have made hardwire connections and fixed it later.

I originally got that bike a couple of years before, for free from a family friend. It sat outside for like 20 years. We got to my dad's garage and sprayed some starting fluid in it with a car battery and it fired right up. I started working on it and it needed new float needles and a serious carb cleaning in general. The front brakes were locked as well. I fixed all of that and then put about 3k miles on it before this trip. I was unsure of it's reliability. There was a friend I worked with who had a parts CB500 and gave me the coil, points plate, etc. because I restored a vintage guitar amp for him. Most of the parts swappable.

With that said, I'd still bring about the same amount again. The CB400A I have put about 21k miles on it since I've owned it, it's a fun bike but I don't think it would do very well going up some of these large hills in the PA mountains unless I regeared it. Which is something I don't really want play around with.

The funny thing is, the more you bring the less you actually need. It's when you don't bring it you end up needing it! Learned that lesson from riding the Puch Mopeds on long distance rides. We used to take them from Mechanicsburg to Gettysburg and I used to personally ride them into Lancaster City from rural areas quite often.

Keep all the stuff stock as much as you reasonably can and it seems like they shouldn't let you down. I do go over the wiring when I get an unknown bike and clean every single connector with contact cleaner and add some dielectric grease to them. I haven't had too many scary electrical issues, but I've read enough horror stories. Worst I've had is the fuse box gave me a bit of crap on the 550 after I started putting some miles on it. Every now and again you put it on the center stand while filling it up, then I put it down and the bike wouldn't turn on. Wiggle the fuse and it was fine again. Then, back in early 2020 I took it on a decent length trip to Centralia before they covered the highway and it shut off on me in the middle of the night on the way back and had to wiggle that fuse again. Next day I went out and replaced that whole thing with those in-line bussman fuses that have the rubber covers and never had an issue again.

I forgot about the Centralia trip. That one I do have a couple of pictures of. I'll try to add that on a separate thread.

Maraakate said:

The CB400A I have put about 21k miles on it since I've owned it, it's a fun bike but I don't think it would do very well going up some of these large hills in the PA mountains unless I regeared it.

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I hear you on the 400 and agree, I'd not set out on a long trip with a bike of that size but Jim (LDR) did twice, and in a big way.

I'm no stranger to long rides (not that long!) on underpowered stuff. It can be lots of fun. The nitpick with the 400 besides the automatics hill climb ability is the small tank. The book claims about 40-50mpg on that thing, I think it's closer to about 40 on the highway when I checked (and yes, amazingly my speedometer on that bike is accurate, usually I find they're about 5mph off with the older bikes). So 2.5 gallon tank you can really go about 100-120 miles before you're totally empty. Lots of refilling. You can do it, but I'd bring a 2 gallon with me just in case I had a long stretch with no towns or gas stations.

I believe you can get the tank from the 78 CB400 and mount that up, yes? Then you could go longer. But the price of used tanks these days are nuts so I never bothered to try.

I'll check out LDRs thread. Love seeing long ride stories on these bikes.

LDR knows what tanks will fit which version and I'm sure there's a tank from one of the other SOHC 400/450 models that will fit. That series is the outlier with Honda as it has a really wide backbone on the frame, so few others will work.

If I remember correctly the frame part number is the same between the 78 CB400 and 79 CM400 so it should mount up all the same, but details are fuzzy. Been a long time since I've given it any real thought. I think you have to swap the seat with it as well in order to make it work.

Maraakate said:

My girlfriend has family up near Elmira, NY and back in August of 2020 I took the 77 CB550K up this way. Total trip was about a 4 hour ride. Her mom suggested going up parts of route 54 to route 14 and route 220. It was a pretty good ride. I didn't take a lot of pictures, but did manage to get a picture of the bike loaded with goodies before I headed off.

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Here was all the stuff I had stuffed in those bags:

* Spare points plate and points advancer.
* Spare voltage regulator.
* 4 new spark plugs.
* Spare rear and turn signal bulbs.
* Spare fuses.
* 22mm and 24mm for tires (missing in my tool kit).
* RPM/Dwell meter.
* Timing light.
* Butane powered soldering pencil, solder and flux.
* Misc wire.
* 1/4" socket wrench with assorted metric sockets from 8mm-14mm.
* Needle nose vice grips.
* 1 Quart Honda GN4 10W40.
* Spare tubes for front and rear.
* Used air filter (put a new one on from David Silver Spare's before I left).
* Four 16g CO2 cartridges and CO2 cartridge tool.
* 2 tire irons.
* Carb cleaner.
* Electrical contact cleaner.
* Cam lube.
* 85W gear oil poured into one of those tiny 2 stroke oil containers. For chain lube.
* Paper for cleaning the points.

Luckily, I didn't need any of this.

Click to expand...

After reading your post, I'm so paranoid that I will not travel more than one hour from home. I never have more than a spare fuse, my phone, and my wallet.

Ah, well whenever I get an unknown to me bike I clean all the connectors and such first. Then you kind of test it out going ten miles here, twenty there, then you start going a bit farther each time. That bike there was a lot of ten mile trips before I was satisfied with it's reliability. I did have to replace the o-rings on the oil pump as well at one point. It wasn't leaking very bad, but bad enough when I took the cover off it was in there. Putting brand new OEM float needles in it as soon as you verify it runs is a good thing to do as well. Rebuilding the petcock (if possible) and putting inline fuel filter in is also a good measure.

You want the tank from a 1980/81 CM400E, 3.7 gallons. Your seat should fit just fine. Alternate would be the CB400T1 tank, same capacity but your seat will have to squish hard on to the tank.
Here's the E tank with a stock '79 CM400T seat

Same tank with a CB400T1 seat shows the gap because the seat is shorter in front to accommodate the slightly longer tank

If you were to make a gearing change I would only go 1 tooth less than stock in the rear due to the engine/transmission characteristics of the A model which rely on torque rather than horsepower.

esh21167 said:

After reading your post, I'm so paranoid that I will not travel more than one hour from home. I never have more than a spare fuse, my phone, and my wallet.

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That's the adventure, go ride where ever for however long and see what happens. What's the worse thing other than a crash? Bike quits, call a tow truck or try fixing it first. Of course it helps if you've gone thru this list first https://www.vintagehondatwins.com/f...5-Basic-Checklist-for-the-New-to-you-Old-Bike
Both of my roadtrips were done over the age of 60 and mostly deaf. Now that's an adventure trying to talk to someone by phone, unable to understand 95% of what they say, trying to find a tube so you can fix the flat tire.