SESSION 40: Part 1 - Valve Covers & Carburetor Insulator Installation
The day began perfectly: stunning spring weather, breakfast at Philz with Jessica, deep dive in home garage for micrometers, discover micrometers (and more), and Goodwill drop-off. With domestic duties accomplished I hightail it over to the bat cave with the goal of making the RVF breathe its first breath on it's first anniversary (Sunday 4/15). It would be a perfect birthday present
Step 1: Reshimming effort completed it was time to reinstall the front and rear valve covers. The covers go on easily each cover marked with “IN” informing the proper orientation of the cover. The one with a vent port goes in back for cylinders #1 & #3.
Months ago I had cleaned up and secured the old gaskets with RTV. I can’t remember if the Haynes manual said to use RTV as I may have read it elsewhere
. IMO can't hurt.
The covers are secured by four flanged nuts and a thick metal washer with a rubber over-mold. I borrowed Anthony's Park Tools ratcheting torque wrench. Very nice tool
. 10Nm (7in-lbf) buttons everything up. Easy.
Step 2: Check the carb assembly one last time. I rechecked each screw and nut for the umpteenth time to make sure everything was tight and tidy. All good.
Step 3: Hello infamous carb insulators. Four short and flexible tubes whose sole purpose is to structurally couple and provide passage for the carburetor mixture directly into the engine cylinders. Molded in rubber they are compliant and ensure a leak free system like a coolant hose but without any internal fiber reinforcement (the pressures are much lower as are the temps).
I look back and chuckle knowing how clueless I was when it came to removing the carbs. What a newb!
I hadn't no idea what an insulator was, how anything fit together, or that insulators can harden to a rigid plastic. Because I'm a weakling I resorted to almighty leverage and used a pry bar to pop the carbs off the bike. I'd have no hesitation to use the same technique next time.
Also recall my rubber softening experiment testing methyl salicylate (wintergreen oil) as a rubber restorer. It works! Rubber becomes soft but cracks don't mend. I'll have to dig up those test parts and see what they look like after 10 months of sitting...somewhere.
Anyyyways, to be safe I purchased new OEM insulators from Stuart at Rising Sun Cycles. They were something like $12 each. The new ones have a hardness similar to tire rubber.
There are two part numbers for the insulators – the bike taking two of each. Part 1 has markings for cylinders #2 & #3 the Part 2 for cylinders #1 & #4. The insulators require two clamps each: engine side (lower) and carb side (upper).
The clamps are like a typical hose clamp plus they have a single hole in side to fit over a small boss on the rubber’s side. Its function is to index the band and prevent spinning out of position. Forcing a screw driver into the screw torques the band to spin and we don't want that. It also works out that the clamps get positioned with clearance (just barely) for a right angle driver to engage the idle mixture screw as necessary.
INSULATOR and LOWER CLAMP INSTALL:
1 Install lower clamp on insulator
2 Lube engine port and insulator interior and with silicone vacuum grease
3 Slip insulator onto correct cylinder port while ensuring the rib on the engine casting aligns with the notch in the rubber. This places the insulator in the orientation the Honda engineers intended.
4 Tighten the clamps to the max with a Phillips driver (8mm nut driver too fat to engage adequately) until the clamp flanges bottom out on the trapped spacer.
5 The rubber gets squeezed on like crazy. I seriously doubt any leaks there.
Engine side done.
The lower clamps were easy to secure because the carbs were absent. The upper clamps, on the other hand, must be tightened after the carbs are mated making access possible only from the sides. Since the clamps can go on either LEFT or RIGHT facing, I played with different configurations until I settled on one that was optimal for access with a 16” Phillips driver. In the end I set it such that clamps #2, #4, & #3 will be tightened from the left side of the bike while cylinder #1 will be from the right.
The bed has been made for docking the carburetors
. This is going to be fun or a PITA.
, setting up a shop, solving missing keys puzzle, rancid gas shit show, watching the dash light up, valve reshimming, and carburetor rebuild. Notably, making friends with BARFer Anthony Cool dude 
and talented wrencher 
. We text all the time bouncing ideas off of each other and share wins and fails. Cheers, mate!
and 
to Bill for his sage advise and detailed explanations. You da man!. No doubt there was added pressure knowing most of the RVF's parts are hard to come by or NLA added to the stress of working on a grey market bike. If available, parts can be pricey and have to be sourced from Japan, Thailand or the UK. Being a rookie at this I didn’t want to make any irreparable mistakes. I worked cautiously one measured step at a time.
. I went through two fails requiring a complete tear down. Each time I did something lame but learned. Third time is a charm. It took a a lot of time and effort but I am mostly satisfied with the results. Hey, and I had no missing or leftover parts 
