CT90 Restoration Adventures

The Story Behind How I Bought a Stolen Honda CT90 I'm always on the lookout for a good CT90 deal and I'll regularly check Craigslist to see what bikes are for sale, especially the non-running bikes that are 90% complete and are being sold dirt cheap. Recently I picked up a great CT90 without a title, but in starting the process to get a title for the bike I was notified that the bike had been reported stolen which resulted in a series of events that I 'll share below, but based on what I went through I thought it might be a benefit to others to write this post and share a few lessons learned. Related Post: Registering a Small Motorcycle in the State of Vermont In mid August of this year I came across a great CT90 deal on Craigslist and was the first to respond to the ad and therefore was lucky enough (or at least I thought so at the time...) to pick up the 1970 CT90 in the picture below for only $200.00.

I recently learned about a CT90 failure mode that was new to me of a part called the Shift Drum Stopper that is part of your shift mechanism in your CT90.  I'm also finding that this isn't a failure mode that is all that uncommon and from now on I'm am considering replacing the shift drum stopper whenever I rebuild a clutch on one of my CT90's.  While this approach may be overkill, the part is cheap and its an easy replacement when your in doing your clutch, so I think it is well worthwhile. I recently rebuilt my clutch on my 1975 CT90 and after I put everything back together I took the bike out for a spin in the neighborhood and the bike wouldn't shift correctly, so I pulled the cover off and started poking around.  Nothing jumped out at me as being out of place, so I started surfing the web and came across several postings related to poor shifting and something called the "Shift Drum Stopper".  I went back and looked at my bike and low and behold the

Even though all the CT90's I own are models built before 1977, I still like to use the Honda shop manual for the 1977 thru 1979 CT90's and the 1980 thru 1982 CT110's. This version of the Honda shop manual has much better diagrams and instructions for items common to all years of CT90's and also has a great trouble shooting diagram to help figure out what is wrong with you bike. You can download a copy of this manual at the following  page .  The follow is an example of the trouble shooting chart in the manual: