Honda Trail Update

I shifted focus back to my mopeds for a bit so that I could have them all ready for TOTFEST. So the Honda Trail has been on the back-burner for a bit. Aside from the acorns and mouse habitat removal it’s gotten a full tear down.

First I  installed new seals and dust covers on the forks.

Then I took the engine off the frame and pulled apart the top end to inspect the top end, I didn’t measure it, but compression just felt low overall. I didn’t really see anything wrong, but I honed the cylinder, threw some new rings in and some new gaskets. It does seem like there’s a lot more compression there when I kick it over now so I’m guessing that did something.

Next up it was off with the wheels. I’ll be using this bike for street using 100% of the time so the dry rotted knobbies had to go and some new street tires went on. I like Savas, but I wanted something with more tread than the MC11s I usually run on my mopeds and ended up trying out a pair of 17 x 2.75 MC51s. The seem pretty beefy and weren’t all to hard to mount. The rear hub was messed up so I ended up getting a whole new wheel for the rear. I’ll do a separate post on what was wrong with it in the future. I also rattle canned the wheels black before throwing the tires on.

After that it was just reassembly mostly. The petcock was leaky, but on these trails it’s actually part of the carburetor. Turns out you can get a complete clone carb for right around $25 dollars for these things so I just replaced the whole thing. I replaced the exhaust with a $45 Honda CRF 50 pipe. It doesn’t fit perfectly, If I was running the skid plate there might be issues, but like I said I’m not using this thing off road so it’s staying off. Handlebars swapped out for some low rise bars (maybe too low?) and the bike got a new chain.

Headlight, taillight, controls and all the turn signals are mounted, but wiring them up is next on the list.