SuzukiSavage.com - Print Page

SuzukiSavage.com
/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl
General Category >> The Cafe >> Getting a 1985 Honda VF700S Sabre back on the road
/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1320685664

Message started by spacepirates on 11/07/11 at 09:07:43

Title: Getting a 1985 Honda VF700S Sabre back on the road
Post by spacepirates on 11/07/11 at 09:07:43

I love my savage, it is pretty much the perfect bike for getting around town but it has two flaws: 1) it isn't that comfortable at highway speeds for very long and 2) I've only got one of them so down time for working on it is a killer. I know both points are arguable (and fixable), but hey, it is an excuse to get another motorcycle.

I wanted to fix these issues on a budget, with minimal down time, so I decided on picking up an old motorcycle. The first one I got was a 1978 Yamaha XS 750 (inline triple, such a strange engine...) and after a short while got that back on the road (yet to be inspected though, needs rear turn signals and fork seals).

However, I kept looking on craigslist for steals and eventually came across the Sabre. Now, I'm not a big Honda fan. I feel that a lot of people flock to them without really researching what bike/car is best just based on the name. So it isn't so much I have beef with the brand as I do with the loyalty. Anyway, that aside, I couldn't resist this bike's price and personality.

Listed for a meager $400, the seller offered it to me for $200 if I could haul it away that day. I talked him down to $175 and loaded that bike up. It had 39k miles, barely used tires (albeit they were deflated), no major damage, and this guy was the original owner. It hadn't been run (or moved) in a decade, but aside from some paint fading and stuck front brakes, it was near perfect.

The bike also has a little attitude in it. It has that weird psuedo-sporty styling from the 80's and this bike was purpose built to give a middle finger to Harley Davidson. That's right, Honda built this model specifically for two years just to screw over Harley; in the early 80's harley lobbied for huge tariffs against foreign bikes over 700ccs because they were getting their butts kicked by the then 750cc Sabre/Magna lineup. So for two short years, Honda made this version of the Sabre/Manga engine at a cool 699ccs.

The Sabre has a V4 liquid cooled engine (first time for me working on a bike with a radiator...), a shaft drive, and a hidden monoshock. It also has an overdrive 6th gear for cruising on the highway.

So, with that in mind I've been working on the bike since Thursday to get her road-worthy and am pretty close. Without a doubt the most agonizing thing about this bike is the carb setup. You know how it can be a pain removing the Savage's carb? It fits so tightly in that unless you get it just right it won't budge? yeah, V4 with four carbs mounted (about) 90degrees from each other. it makes for getting the carbs in and out nigh impossible, especially with the airbox there which is directly bolted to the intake of the carb with screws you can't reach that are so stuck/tight I couldn't get them out using an impact driver even with the carbs off the bike. Getting the carbs back in was no fun task either. You need waaaaay too much force. big pain in the butt.

The carbs themselves were in really good shape. nice and shiny and clean on the inside save for one carb that had some reddish silt in it (looked too red to be rust, but who knows). The antifreeze/coolant system looked pretty rusty too. It scared the crap out of me when I started the bike up and it spat out coolant at me through a leaky hose :(

All this aside, I think I'm fairly close to taking her out on a test run after maybe another 8hrs or so of work on her. I need to put new rear turn signals on her, swap out the battery, refill the coolant, change the final drive oil, and double check the petcock. It has a vacuum style petcock which we all know and love ;) but with one grievous difference: it has no "prime" setting. On, Off, Res. None of them allowed fuel to flow with the bike off, so I don't know if that is a good thing (hey the vacuum petcock is working like it should!) or bad (hey res should actually be prime and something is blocked up). Another "bad" to the petcock is it doesn't have a plastic filter on the top; it is just a hollow copper tube, which means I'll definitely be putting a paper filter inline. I didn't see any rust on the inside of the gas tank, but it is hardly easy to see all of the internal surface area.

One thing I was sad to learn was that this bike doesn't have a forum like ours. I found one in Swedish (maybe?) and a few random articles on the bike, but nothing like this forum. It really makes me appreciate the little tips and tricks you get from sites like this one. I could have used a few working with those friggin carbs. I was able to find more than one article that talks about an issue with the engine. it seems there is barely adequate (or inadequate) oil flow to the head which causes cam wear (and failure). There was a ticking in one of the cylinders when I had her idling so over the winter I'll have to open her up and check. They also have a cam chain tensioner issue like us, but theirs is that it gets stuck and won't extend any further (a fix for which is smacking it, ha ha!).

If you're interested in the preliminary album, I've got it here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/112952642957603261347/11311?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCODW7bbexJOM7gE&feat=directlink
(hopefully that works...)

A picture of it right after I got it home:
http://https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-rOlk-d0uBmQ/TrNhP-1qkgI/AAAAAAAAAuY/bgl3FU30oLg/s816/11%252520-%2525202.jpg

My photography skills are clearly wanting, and it doesn't help I'm in a garage with no lighting save one 60w bulb at night using my phone as a camera...

More pictures and info to come once I get it up and running. From what I read it should be an interesting ride...

Article on the sabre:
http://www.motorcycleclassics.com/classic-japanese-motorcycles/honda-vf700s-sabre.aspx

Title: Re: Getting a 1985 Honda VF700S Sabre back on the
Post by built2last66 on 11/07/11 at 09:23:28

Sounds like a cool bike, and is that a built in fork brace? How does the highway "overdrive" 6th gear work?

And from the pic that thing looks fresh out of the package... almost

Title: Re: Getting a 1985 Honda VF700S Sabre back on the
Post by verslagen1 on 11/07/11 at 09:50:51

Had one offered to me before I'd finished cutting my eye teeth on the savage. More or less same as yours but no carbs.

Carbs will be the trick, said to be a royal PIA. Hard to install and four of them.

I bet you can search sabre or v65 and find a similar thread way back if it hasn't been cleansed yet.

Title: Re: Getting a 1985 Honda VF700S Sabre back on the
Post by spacepirates on 11/07/11 at 10:01:31

6E796560783E606D7F783A3A0C0 wrote:

Sounds like a cool bike, and is that a built in fork brace? How does the highway "overdrive" 6th gear work?

And from the pic that thing looks fresh out of the package... almost

It looks a lot better in the picture. Once you get up close you can see the red stripe is faded a bit and there are gas lines in the paint on the tank. crappy lighting and low-res pictures do wonders to smooth out the complexion :D

Yeah, that is a built in fork brace, which is pretty cool. and the overdrive gear works just like any other gear: you're in fifth then you just shift up into it. or so i hear.

Title: Re: Getting a 1985 Honda VF700S Sabre back on the
Post by spacepirates on 11/07/11 at 10:09:19

706374756A6761636837060 wrote:

5 hours to go from fully put together bike to carbs off. I could probably do it in 2 hours now that I know how I did it. another three hours to put them back on. I had to use a piece of iron pipe leveraged against the frame and the carb to push them into place.

I'm overly paranoid of faulty floats since that is a major problem on the XS750 (leading to gas seeping into the crankcase and screwing everything up) so i really hope the carbs are as in good of shape as they looked. The floats and float bowls are all weird because the carbs aren't mounted level and are really tightly packed together.

The v65 sounds like a monster of a bike. I'm happy with having the baby brother to that one. Big bikes are great an all, but they can be a handful to manage.

Title: Re: Getting a 1985 Honda VF700S Sabre back on the
Post by spacepirates on 11/09/11 at 20:30:17

One interesting thing about V-4s is that they can keep on truckin on just two cylinders.

The bad thing? more parts to go bad. Once she started hitting on all four there was an awful loud tick from one (two) cylinder(s). Not unlike our camchain tick, to be honest.

I guess my hopes and dreams of getting this garage imprisoned bike out on the road before winter are shot. I'd still love to take her for a spin, but I couldn't knowing that I'd be risking catastrophic failure.

Plans are now to see what nasty work I'm in for by opening her guts up and seeing what the deal is on the inside. I'm hoping for a "stuck" tensioner as i've heard can happen on these bikes. Worst case: bad cam.

at least this happened now rather than in the middle of prime riding season. weather is starting to get a tad bit nippley anyways with snow in the forecast for tomorrow night. winter will give me plenty of time to go slow and do things right.

Title: Re: Getting a 1985 Honda VF700S Sabre back on the
Post by Serowbot on 11/09/11 at 21:06:27

Replace the tires,... if you get her roadworthy...
Even if the tread is good,.. they are dried out, and will have no stick...
Ten years sitting, is actually dangerous for tires...

Best luck on your new project... ;)...

Title: Re: Getting a 1985 Honda VF700S Sabre back on the
Post by houstonbofh on 11/10/11 at 18:48:01

I had an anti-harley-tax bike. The 1984 Nighthawk 700SC. It was a blast. Once you get her right, you will have a grin for days! ;D