Last time, we had just finished taking off the exhaust:

First thing we need to do is take out the battery.  Nothing to this part.  Just use a screwdriver to take the wires off the terminals then use a socket to open up the latch.  After you’ve got the battery out, you’ll probably want to put the bolt back in the latch so that you don’t lose it.

Use a pair of box end wrenches to loosen the clutch cable adjustment lock nuts.  Once they’re loose, you can pretty easily slide the adjustment assembly up and out of the way to separate the cable from the block.

Once that’s done, it’s a simple flick of the wrist to remove the cable end from the lower clutch lever.

Next, you want to make sure all of your electrical connections have been cleared so you don’t break any wires when you separate the engine from the frame.

Pull the boots off of the spark plugs and move them up out of the way.

Loosen the boot around the drive shaft joint.  Be careful with the boot.  It’s fragile and if you tear it road grit can get in and drastically reduce the life of the universal joint.

Leaving the boots on the carbs, disconnect the intakes from the cylinder heads.  On my bike, someone had replaced a couple of the normal hex-head bolts with allen-heads, so I had to be creative.

Slide a trolley jack under the engine.  Make sure you have something soft between the jack and the engine.  Some people like to use a wood block.  Personally, I like to use a stack of rags.

Bring the jack up just enough that it takes the weight of the engine without lifting the bike up at all.  We don’t want the engine to shift up when the mounting bolts are removed any more than we want it to shift down.

Remove all of the mounting bolts.  Be aware that two of the mounting bolts go all the way through the frame and have a nut on the other side.

Now, the fun begins.  Gently rock the jack towards the front of the bike and the engine should come along with it.  If the engine is caught up on anything, try rocking it back and forth.  If it still won’t move, go back a few steps and make sure you disconnected everything.  Assuming the engine moves, you’ll accomplish a few different things.

The cylinders will pull away from the the intake.

You’ll notice that some of the wires are still connected to the block next to the battery.  Disconnect everything that moves.

The drive shaft will disconnect from the engine.

The starter will pull out from under the mounting tabs on the frame.  Now that you can easily get to the bolt, disconnect the ground wire from the starter.

That’s everything there is to disconnect.  From here, you can jiggle the engine forward and down and it will easily drop from the frame.  If you’re fairly strong, you should be able to balance the engine on the jack by yourself as you work it out.  It’s probably much safer if you work with a friend.  I’m 6′5, 250lbs and it was a task for me to do it on my own.

That’s all there is to it.  Next time, we’ll prep the new engine to go into the frame.

Aquisition
In On February 22, 2008, I picked up a Honda CX650E from a very nice gentleman named Jim in Michigan. Since the Eurosport is quite rare in the U.S., I figured it was worth the trip around the pond. I still wonder if taking the ferry would have been easier and/or more cost effective. Anyway, here’s how she looked when I first picked her up:

Here you can see the faded paint, the lack of air horn, the extra running engine (as opposed to the bad one in the frame), and my buddy Chad who happened to be picking up an engine (which turned into 1.5 bikes) about 10 miles from where the E had been living.

Removing the Guards
Here she is sitting in my garage at home, waiting for me to tear her apart. The bike in the background is an ‘86 Suzuki Intruder that I bartered to my friend Steve.

My Eurosport happened to come with engine guards installed, so step one was getting those off. There’s one bolt attaching the guard to the frame near the rear of the engine:

There are two more connections at the front of the engine hanger, right by the radiator:

Once the engine guard is off, the engine looks something like this:

The other guard comes off just the same. One bolt in back:

And two in front:

By the way, getting these off makes use of three sockets: 17mm, 14mm, and 12mm.

The right side, cleared of guards looks like this:

Stay tuned. In my next post, I’ll go over removing the exhaust.