Well today I got a battery in the thing finally.  They actually have pretty decent prices at Wal-Mart.  Anyway, I still can’t find any definitive source for the gas leak, but I did get the left carburetor off and discovered it’s bone dry and gummed up badly.  So, all I can figure is that gas is coming in through the fuel line and going back out the carburetor drain line…which seems to run into the frame around the same place where I was seeing the gas dripping from.

So I’m now looking for someone local to rebuild this carburetor.  Anyone interested?  Also, I found that the muffler is badly rotted and has a gaping hole toward the back.  No big deal there.  I can replace that at my leisure…nothing wrong with a little extra noise that in all honesty produces a nice deep rumble.

I’m going to post an ad on Craigslist to see who will rebuild the carb for a decent price.

Yeah, I woke up this morning to a horrible smell of gasoline making its way through the house (coming from the garage).  The rag that I stuck underneath the CL200 was soaked.  It’s definately leaking gas, but I just can’t figure out where it’s coming from.  I guess when I get home I’ll lift up the tank to see if it has a leak and the fuel is somehow traveling through the frame or something. 

The fuel is ending up trickling down the centerstand.  I don’t see or feel anything on the fuel lines or carbs.  It could be coming out of the back of the left hand carb – I’ll have to pull off the side cover and air filter when I get home to find out.

Well, I’m making some headway.  Over the weekend, I did get it started for the first time since changing out the plugs and wire ends.  It started right away, but is still only running on only one cylinder.  The left cylinder is not firing.  I still have not had an opportunity to pull out the plug and make sure it’s sparking, but I think it’s probably a fuel delivery issue. 

I put on a new tachometer cable today and also struck a good deal on a new left hand controls/clutch lever mount.  The guys over at Western Reserve Honda in Mentor just happened to have one in stock and wanted to get rid of it, so I got it NOS for less than what they’re going for on ebay.

At this point, I need to get a battery ASAP.  It’s impossible to do much troubleshooting when it has to be jumped to the car in order to get any power.  After the battery (hopefully I’ll pick that up tomorrow) I have a few remaining issues before it can really be ridden:

• The clutch is REALLY hard to pull.  I don’t know if that’s normal, but we’ll see how it works once it’s running off of its own power
• The front brake is going to need some TLC.  When you pull the lever, it won’t go back without help.
• The issue with the left cylinder
• It may be leaking gas, I’m not sure.  It was all over the floor tonight after filling it up, but that may very well be from a filling incident…we’ll see what’s on the floor in the morning.  Hopefully nothing.

Those are the major issues right now.  I’ll need to replace the speedometer with the one from the CB360 too…but that won’t prevent it from being ridden.

Mystery fuel leak – can’t seem to find where it’s coming from, I assume at this point it’s from sloppy filling

New left hand controls.  I left the old controls dangling for now while I wait to have time to mess around with getting the wires through the handlebars.  For now, it’s finally supporting the clutch lever.

Another view of the controls.  I think for the sake of making it operational I’ll run them on the outside of the handlebars and then get more ambitious with the wire routing over the winter.

This is the current damaged speedometer, which I don’t think is original anyway.  The face is a light green and does not match the tachometer.  The good thing is that the tach has all of the warning lights, so swapping in the working speedometer from the CB360 (that does match the tach in color) should be no issue.

Bottom line – I’m still hoping to have it roadworthy by early July.  After that I’ll deal more with cosmetics and start planning the actual restore….AFTER I know that everything works.

Making some progress.  I put on new spark plug caps, spark plugs, and found that the fuel leak from the petcock was because the drain screw wasn’t tightened.  My biggest issue at the moment is figuring out this issue with the clutch lever.  It seems that maybe someone cracked the mount that is a part of the left hand controls, and then installed some sort of aftermarket piece that is just a clutch lever and mirror mount.  I researched every parts web site I could find and it looks like I may have to bit the bullet and spend $100 on new left hand controls.  I guess that’s ok – eventually it will need to be done as the plan for this bike is restoring it to factory new.

Just got this on Friday.  I’m pretty psyched.  These are very hard to find and this one seems to be a good one.  On Sunday I put the various loose pieces on the bike, changed the fuel lines, sprayed a little ether in the carbe and jumpstarted it.  I’m told it hasn’t run in at least ten years.  It fired up after just a few minutes of cranking.  As I get into it I’ll start a new project page for it….please join this site and share your vintage restoration projects too.