Overhaulin' Da Honda

Before

A change of pace from my Puch builds, I decided to overhaul my 1987 Honda Elite to be my daily commuter to and from work.  Set out to do some overdue maintenance after 5+ years of neglect.  Also, this would be a good time to install the rest of the JDM parts I got from Nihon.





First up the panel strip down:

Naked!!

It was a good time to revisit the parts I had on this bike.  I've long forgotten what I put in.

Oko pulley and ramp?

Orange and yellows?  ?? grams

Oko

Sym clutches

..on a Dio clutch assy?

Stock Honda belt

My 87 Elite has a SA50 motor on it.  But I soon discovered that my gears (primary and secondary) where from an 87 SE50 tranny.  Back in the day, this was a common mod because aftermarket gears weren't so readily available like they are now.  It brought the gear ratio from stock 12:1 to about 10:1.  It was a perfect set up for stock cylinders.  I was going about 45mph on my 50cc set up with these gears.  But I installed a 70ccish aftermarket kit almost 20 years ago!! (No idea the brand.  Might be Taiwan).

1987 gear set for sale

Can you identify this kit?

DD50s

I also had an aftermarket Arrow pipe on it.  I was pulling to much wheelies with this high powered set up.  It was time to change them out.  So, I went to Moped Connection, an old school moped shop in Hawaii.  Its sooo old school that this was the first moped shop I ever went to over 30 years ago.  I bought my first drop handlebar for my Puch there.  The owner Eric is still there too!!  Great customer service then and great customer service now.  He helped me troubleshoot my gearing.  I ended up with DD50 gear set for both primary and secondary.  It brought my gear ratio down to about 7:1.  He also hooked me up with an oil pump plug.  Back in the day this wasn't available and we used to just cap off the oil lines.  Side story:  I installed this oil plug and ran it and it popped off.  Didn't know I had to brace it.  That was such a Noob move!!!

Time for the disc brake conversion:

Bought this set from Yahoo Japan when I was living in Japan.  Did some initial mock ups.

Are you mocking me?

I did a ton of research and ask a lot of questions on HondaSpree.net.  A guy by the name of BakaRacer gave me some good info.  He has some sick 1987 Elite builds.  He advised me that the ZX headset is plug and play.  But there would be a few minor modifications in order to make it work.  One was I needed to cut the bottom of the next and re-weld it to shorten the gap between the top panels and bottom panels.  I went in a different direction and cut the fork top instead:

Gap in the panels

About 1" cut-line

Hacked!!

Shortened!!

Perfect!!  It hits the lock!!

Second modification I needed to do is heat gun my foot shield panels so the fork clears during turns.

Sloppy...

...goodness

Now the brake handle and reservoir install.  This portion was a pain in the ass!!  I did a lot of measuring and butchering.  I cut up my stock head set panel.  I figured I will eventually convert them to the DJ-1 headset I have now or I'll get the dual light DJ-1RR head set instead.  (Side note:  Eric and Moped Connection has an 1987 Elite and did a disc conversion with DJ-1 headset panels.  He recommended using the Honda G brake controls because the reservoir wasn't as big as the ZX one.  It would be a true bolt on conversion versus what I did here.)  For now, hack away:

Hacked the stock brake off the throttle

Hacked the side mirror holder off the ZX brake set

Additional grinding and fiddling around required.  The result:

Fit!!

And the final results:

Oh la la!!

Better side?

Happy face?

Factory made?

Factory made!!

Things I hacked on this conversion!!

All worth it!!

Happy Tuning!!