If you believe user forums, the battery charging system on the CB500/550, as well as the virtually identical system on the CB350F/400F, is so weak as to dictate your riding style and even prevent you from installing high performance ignition coils or a more powerful headlight. This is so patently false that one has to wonder whether the people making such pronouncements have any considerable time with these bikes either beneath them or on their worktables.

Granted that the bikes' tachometers are not super-accurate, but my experience is that with a charging breakeven of just 1300 rpm (headlight off), there is no reason to call these systems inadequate. And my more than 50 years servicing them, including in every working environment up to and including a dozen years in busy metro area authorized Honda dealerships, tells me no one riding these machines has ever worried about their batteries going dead on them. It just isn't a thing. But you couldn't tell that from forums.

In fact I was talking with a vintage Honda forum member just a few weeks ago and I detected this same sentiment from him. So I asked him if he was talking about riding with heated clothing. His answer was, "of course." Amazing. How do they so completely fail to regard this as exceptional use that they don't even mention it? It is illogical to expect a 50-plus-year old Honda to support electrical loads typical of bikes produced within the last few years that have more than three times the electrical capacity.

Speaking of capacity, oddly, user forums want to take away from you the right to adjust the output of your CB500/550 and CB350F/400F charging systems. The systems are in fact adjustable and very easily. However, sohc4 forum "experts" consider it an illegitimate adjustment, despite the fact that it is described in the official manuals for all of the 70s inline fours. I recommend for any of these bikes turning up the charge rate to three-quarters capacity and I have done so many many times. This will make the charging system more adaptable to various riding habits and conditions and is specially helpful considering the very infrequent use these machines see now that they are collector's bikes. But this adjustment should not be regarded as a way to enable the use of heating riding gear. It likely won't help. That just isn't their world.