Honda CB500 Handlebar Replacement – Wrench With Me

If you’ve been watching my Honda CB500F series, then you know it’s been crashed a little bit. Today we’re going to be fixing it up. The first video was on how to tell if the handlebar was bent. The second video was on how to replace your brake lever. The third video is going to be about how to change the handlebar.

We’ll be doing swapping out the handlebars on the Honda CB500 in three steps:

1. Removing the old handlebar
2. Installing the new handlebar
3. Re-using the bar ends and original grips

I haven’t done a handlebar swap in the better half of a decade, but it should be pretty easy, right? Let’s just go do it and see what happens.

Removing your Honda CB500 handlebars

Our first goal is to just remove everything off of the original handlebar that we’ll need to reinstall on the new one. I started by loosening the bolts that hold the mirrors off first. Both bottom bolts were already kind of loose which was kind of concerning.

Each of the control switch housings are held in place by two screws. You’ll need to remove the two screws from each of the left and right switch housings to get them off.

At this point you’ll notice that the cables are held in place by re-usable zip ties. If you take your time to lift up and pull out, instead of cutting them, you can re-use both zip ties.

By now you’ll find that you still can’t get the throttle grip off of the handlebar. For that you’ll have to take out the screw holding the bar end weight in place. I did this with locking pliers and a Phillips screw driver. Put a cloth between the pliers and the bar end so that the pliers teeth don’t scratch up your bar end weights.

The last thing you need to do to remove the handlebars is to take a 12 mm bit and remove the four bolts holding the handlebar clamp. From there you should be able to lift up on the bars to take them off of your Honda CB500. If they’re really stuck in there and pulling up doesn’t work, try banging one edge of the handlebar downwards, to pop it up on the opposite side. Just be sure to protect your gas tank so it doesn’t get any accidental scratches.

Installing the new handlebar

So we’ve got our old, bent handlebar off. Now what?

First we’re going to slide the new handlebar into the throttle grip, because we know the cables aren’t long enough for it to fit if we don’t do this first.

Next we’ll put the handlebar in the clamp and just loosely put one or two of the 12mm bolts back in. We are going to adjust the angles of everything later on, this is just to help hold the bars in place while we bolt everything back together.

You can re-install the mirror mounts and put those bolts back in hand tight for now.

Then you can put the two screws back into each housing. You’ll need to hold the hand control housings together tightly with one hand, while you screw in the screws with the other hand. If you don’t hold the housing together tightly you’ll get gaps between the casings, but if you hold everything tightly together it’ll fit back together perfectly.

Once you’ve got your throttle, mirrors, and hand controls bolted back up, you can re-install those re-usable zip ties to help keep everything neat.

Re-using bar end weights and hand grips

To get the original left side hand grip off of the old handlebar, you can use a small thin screw driver. Run the screw driver under the grip, between the handlebar and the inside of the grip. All we’re trying to do break the contact between of any glue or adhesive holding the grip to the handlebar.

You can also grab some compressed air and blow it under there while pulling the grip off.

Once I was done doing this, I just put the old bar on the floor, put my foot on it to hold the bar down, and pulled the old grip off by hand. Now your old handlebar will have nothing left on it, but it will have stuff left inside of it that we need to take out.

The stuff left inside are your handlebar weights, and they’re what your bar end weights screw into. They’re important because they help stop your motorcycle’s handlebar from vibrating too much at high speeds or high engine RPM.

If you look at the ends of your original handlebars you’ll see there are two little tabs holding the handlebar weights in place, pry those two tabs in with help from a flathead screw driver.

Next you’ll notice two little circle holes by each end of the handlebar (four in total) with more tabs to push in. Grab a small flat head screw driver and a hammer to bang those in.

Now put the screw from the bar end weight into the handlebar inner weight, and use the screw to pull the inner weight out. Repeat for both sides of the handlebar.

You can take those inner handlebar weights, make sure the inner tabs are lined up with the circle holes in your handlebar, and slide them in to both sides so that those tabs will come out later and fill the holes in the bar. You can also pry out the outer tabs at the handlebars ends.

Now that you’ve put the inner weights in the new handlebars, it’s time to reinstall our left grip. You can use a little hair spray or spray paint as adhesive.

Now the only parts you should have left to install are the two bar ends. You’ll notice each bar end has a certain shape to it, which matches up with the notch in the handlebar inner weights. Make sure those line up, you’ll feel when it’s in correctly, then screw in your bar ends. You may want to use locking pliers and a cloth again to avoid leaving any scratches.

Finishing touches

Lastly, you should sit on your motorcycle. Put your arms out, and rotate to your handlebar to where they felt like they should be. Bolt down the 12 mm bolts that hold your handlebar clamped in place.

Now that your handlebar is where it should be, rotate your mirrors and tighten those up. Remember that your levers should be a bit below your hand grips. If instead your grips are level or above your grips, your handlebar is probably in the wrong position, and you need to rotate it until things all make sense.

Now that you’re all done, when’s the last time you changed your oil and filter? I have a video showing you — based on Honda’s factory service manual — how to change the oil and filter on Honda CB500 as per Honda’s specifications.

If this handlebar swap guide helped you, please help me back by heading over to YouTube and hitting the Like button on this video. I would really appreciate your support! You can also Subscribe to YouMotorcycle on YouTube if you’d like to see more of this kind of content.

If you have any questions or comments, leave them down below. I’ve got plenty more videos on the CB500F in a playlist I’ll link to over here.

As always, I’m Adrian from YouMotorcycle. Thanks for watching. Ride safe, but have fun. Peace.