Basket case P11 resurrection

I've been gathering parts bikes from a friend as payment for a Yamaha SR500 make-run and mild street tracker mods; now we're finalizing the second half of the deal, a make-run and refurbishing of an early Honda CB750K Four, with final payment in the form of a basket case P11.

Here's what I'm starting with...

Frame with Rube Goldberg footpeg mounting setup (amazing contraptions)




Engine was extracted by previous someone in one entire lump, pretty handy (can't do that with a Commando without a HUGE headache)


Literal "basket" of miscellaneous parts

Continuing photos of the stuff that was included...

Very nice seat, only has a parted seam at the nose that can easily be fixed-


Wheels are rough, but the front tire is (was) new, and AL the axle bits are in place-


Can't seem to find any kind of bracket(s) for the rear fender; I suppose the cones on the ends of the frame are correct?

Just a few more pix of the parts...

VERY rusty pipes, rusted through in several places and overall heavy coat of finish rust-


Nicely painted (wrong color) sidecover & oil tank, decent set of meters-


Tank has some scratches and scuffs from being moved around over the years since it was painted-

Did an inventory of all the parts yesterday and found VERY few bits missing. Nice.

Started with cleaning up the forks; they'll need new gaiters, that's about it.



There were no steering head bearings, dug up a handful at my friend's place a couple blocks away (I'm still on the "good" side of borrowing bits & bobs from each other over the years). Dug through my bins of mixed spares and came up with reasonably similar upper and lower headlight ear spacers, one set was missing; you can hardly tell the difference from 10 feet.

Installed forks & yokes w/ headlight ears; steering damper stuff is all there-


Rear wheel & shocks installed; all 4 shock bolts & nuts were missing, EVERYTHING else was there including the slotted spacers & working speedo drive-


Installed front wheel & rusty handlebars-

So, now it's a rolling chassis. Sorry for the poor lighting and lousy phone camera shots here...

Rolled it over to where the engine was sitting, laid the engine over on some boat cushions-


Laid the frame over the engine, wiggled it about 'till one of the rear engine mount holes lined up and dropped in a bolt-


Voila! Engine installed. No lower back pain involved, and no, I don't do this with shiny/painted bikes.

Cleaned up the carbs, lubed the cables, and set up throttle, enricher lever & clutch lever; all controls work fine-


Slipped on the tank & seat just to see what it'll look like-


So, that's about it for tonight. 10 hours of work to this point, about what I had estimated to reasonably together and rolling The engine has EXCELLENT compression, it was SUPPOSEDLY rebuilt years ago and never re-installed, but it sure looks greasy, oily & dirty in ways that a rebuilt engine shouldn't look (caked in places). It is what it is, I'm reasonably sure it'll fire up.

After reviewing the other P11 pix, I think I've installed the front wheel wrong way 'round...

Looks like what you have there is a Ranger. If the number is between 128646 and 129145, its a Ranger. That's a Ranger-style seat, rear fender, tank (with the badge holes filled in), and the front wheel looks like its got its fins, Ranger hubs weren't skimmed. I can't tell if the rear hub is skimmed. It should also have a switch in the front brake cable - P11As didn't have that. Rear fender attached at 5 points - the very front off a tab welded to the crossmemeber behind the oil tank, two bolts through the bridge brace that slides into the back of the frame, and two bolts through tabs welded to the end of the loop at the back of the that brace. I mounted mine with rubber washers to try to prevent the stress fracturing around the holes.

P11s and P11As had a fiberglass seat pan that acted as the mud guard from the oil tank back to the fender. The fender on the earlier models ended at or just ahead of the bridge brace and were originally aluminum, but many were replaced with chromed steel because of stress cracking around the mount holes in the fender.

The P11 had a short, triangular-shaped solo seat. The P11A had a longer wide-at-the-rear dual seat and the Ranger had the even longer narrow dual seat.

Front wheel assembly is not much different from a Norton. The rear is a nightmare, with about 20 components and tapered roller bearings that are very particular about clearance setting. If not done right, the rear wheel will lock up on you :shock:

Great info, thanx. Seat pan is steel. I must be missing some rear fender mounting hardware.

One of the first 300 Rangers, if your serial # info is correct.

What a coincidence, I happened to have some steel tubing, exactly the correct diameter & length to custom fabricate my own rear fender loop. I used an old busted triumph cylinder in a vice to form it with; I should have taken pix of that... Anyway, I formed the fender mating section by bending it from the center point, right over the top two fins of the side of the Triumph jugs. Then I eyeballed it and clamped one side to one of the spigots and bent it 90 degrees to the top curve of the fender mating section. Test fit and it was darn near perfect. Formed up the opposite side and it slid in place like it was made for it; well, it was, actually.

I then slipped on the seat, and tied the fender up in place to "massage" the fit with a rubber mallet; only took 3 or 4 whacks. Next, I cut & drilled two tabs, rounded off the drilled ends and clamped them in place with C-clamp vice grips. After a bit of welding, I rattle-canned the whole affair and slipped it in place. Drilled for the two bolts at the rear frame tubes and that was that.





Since I've never seen an OEM one, I'm not sure how close I got it. Anyway, it looks fine to me.

I also flipped the front wheel around, installed the brake torque arm, cable, lever, and front fender-

Installed the headlight bucket using a couple of spacers I found in one of my spares bins, installed the meter mount & meters, and popped the ammeter in for the photo-



It's starting to look like a bike!



Dropped off the pipes with a welder who will patch them for now (a good deal cheaper than replacing them at the moment).

That is a great restoration project you have there with virtually all the right bits. You have taken the right decision in having the exhausts repaired as they are scarce with the detatchable end caps.
BillT has been a real help with my P11 projects and as you can see his machine is a stunner.
Regards and keep us up to date with progress,
Paul.

I can't copy the picture, but the brace is more triangular than square, and has a piece of flat stock that goes from just behind the aluminum reducer, over the fender to the other side. Two bolts go through the flat stock, and two bolts go through the tabs at the end of the bar. If you go to walridge's catalogue, look up P/N 03-4019 and you'll see a pic. British only has the same part for like $50, but you should be able to copy pretty accurately from Walridge's pic.

Mine doesn't quite look like that - the original had apparently cracked and the maybe 18 ga original piece was replaced with a piece of 12 ga flat stock with a more gentle bend than original.

As a Ranger, your gearbox should have the serial number stamped on the inner cover behind the kick start lever, perhaps with an 'S', such as 128xxx S. Earlier P11s had a 5-digit number which corresponded to factory records, but did not match the frame or engine number. Only the last batch of P11As and Rangers had the matching number on the gearbox.

Tranny serial number matches the engine, but with an "S" after the number.

Installed all the engine mounting bolts (one or two are a REAL hassle to get at the hidden primary side nuts & washers (no pix).

One thing about some long-term storage situations, mud dauber wasps LOVE to plug up bolt holes everywhere; not only that, they build big blob nests everywhere including INSIDE oil tanks!

Here's what came out after knocking it all loose; it's nearly a CUP FULL-



Poured in about a quart of solvent and sloshed it around multiple times till the drain produced only clear liquid. i had been wondering what those strange sandwich clamps were for...

Oil tank installed-



Also made a new oil manifold gasket, cleaned and re-installed the manifold (no pix)

That's it for today.

That top bracket is upside down - it needs to hold the tank up by slipping under the rod its on top of. Should also have some rubber between - like a cut piece of inner tube glued to the bracket. Vent hose travels out the back pipe, under the fender, and out the back, similar to the vent hose on a Triumph, except inside the fender rather than outside. Use the fender bolts to hold the vent tube via p-shaped clamps.

The clamp at the front of the tank should be the same - slip in behind the rod to hold the tank in place. If everything's right, you'll have 1/4 to 1/2 inch gap between the tank and the frame on the right side.

Both brackets are in the only way they can possibly go, they have two halves each with a semi-circle (together they surround the rubber tubes on the mounting bars).

There is no other way to get the clamps in there and still be able to tighten the nuts to the welded-in captive bolts.

I figured out the vent piping real easily. Trying to compare the oil manifold's pipes to my Commando to make sure to connect the right one to the pump feed through the big strainer. The N15 is different, it feeds from the bottom and is shaped differently.

Too bad the late 60s parts books have so few exploded parts diagrams, I can't find ANY for the P11, at least the N15 and Atlas have engine views and some chassis & wheel breakdowns.

If you look on e-bay part No. 160858191145 that is what the rear fender loop bracket should be like.
Regards, Paul.

grandpaul said:

Both brackets are in the only way they can possibly go, they have two halves each with a semi-circle (together they surround the rubber tubes on the mounting bars).

Click to expand...

Sorry, I didn't see you had both halves of the brackets. Most bikes I've seen (including mine) only have one half.

Paul Webb said:

If you look on e-bay part No. 160858191145 that is what the rear fender loop bracket should be like.
Regards, Paul.

Click to expand...

For that price, I'm sticking with the one I made! I'll fab up two brackets to tie into the shock/seat bolts.

This isn't a restoration, it's a resurrection / make-run.

See following...

Back to work!

Pulled everything off the wiring harness and checked it over, wire insulation is awfully brittle; it'll need to be replaced, but is going on the bike carefully, with exposed sections taped over.

I fabricated this coil / condenser mounting bracket, it'll work nicely although it's probably another part that looks nothing like the original; condensers mount vertically between the coils, which mount the affair to the bracket on the frame-



Cleaned up and installed all of the following-

Coils
Condensers
Light switch
Key switch
Headlight socket
Zener diode
Rectifier
Kill button
Dipper / horn switch
Front brake light switch
2MC capacitor

Had to install about a half-dozen connectors, including the points wires which were chopped instead of simply unplugged. Found the best battery in my stack of old/used ones, serviced it and stuck it on the charger, it came right up. EVERYTHING WORKED! Nice fat blue sparks from both plugs. Still need to clean up and install the horn and rear brake light switch, and check the tail light socket.

Dumped the sump (1/4 cup of very dark but free-flowing oil). Popped open the rocker caps to check around; valves were all properly adjusted, but it's evident the engine was NOT overhauled anytime in it's recent past. Slight sludge buildup in the corners, bits of black grit, etc. (hard to tell from this poor photo)-



Installed the gas tank, new set of petcocks & fuel filters, oil lines, and spark plugs, then it was off to the gas station for a couple of gallons of gas.

Before dumping in the gas, I filled the oil tank about half way up, then knocked loose the rocker feed banjos and started kicking. Took 20-30 kicks to get a dribble up top, oh my aching leg.

Stuck on a set of chopped Commando pipes, rolled it out into the sunlight and started screwing with the carbs that wouldn't tickle. They were totally clean inside the bowls, even the screw-in low speed jets! Had to replace one bowl gasket to get the left carb to stop dribbling.

Gave it a proper tickle, squirted a shot of starter spray in each carb, and got after it. It took 3 kicks to get signs of life out of it, had it catching once, but I was worn out after all the pre-oiling; need to check the points and timing.



Anyway, it's definitely going to be running by tomorrow, and I'll take a ride after I unstick the clutch and install the rear brake pedal. I SHOULD have the original pipes back from the welder who is patching them; I'll need to work off a LOT of rust to make them look half presentable.

Just over 26 hours from basket case to runner, although the engine was already assembled.