Entry for January 26, 2006

 

Yesterday was ROMEO (Retired Old Motor...yada, yada) lunch day and the forcast was 60 in the afternoon.  Problem was that at 8:30am when I would have had to leave to ride 130 miles, it was 25.  Just too damn cold without a windshield, fairing and electric vest, etc.  I decided to stay home a do some work on the bike instead.  First up was installing three heavy duty clutch springs.  The clutch had been slipping and this is the fix after adjustments failed.  Pretty straight forward job, just messy.  I had to pull the primary cover so that so that meant draining the ATF.  The primary chain seemed a little loose so I adjusted it to .25 inch slack as per the manual and went on to replace the springs.  Button it back up, fill with fresh ATF and fire it up.  Won't idle worth a hoot.  Adjusted the screw way in to get a decent idle.  Something didn't seem right but thought the new springs might have had something to do with it.  Away I go for a little ride, no slipping but a bit of drag and neutral is hard to hit.  Still not idling and dies at a couple of stop lights.  I had no choice but to pull the cover off again.  Not wanting to waste fresh ATF I borrowed a long cake pan from the kitchen (don't tell your Mother).  I couldn't think that the clutch was the problem so I adjusted a little more slack in the primary chain and buttoned it up again.  Fired it up and it's reving about 1800 RPM, guess I had the chain a little tight.

  Next up are the higher capacity oil pumps I purchased from CMW.  Another straight forward but messy job.  The engine hasn't seized up so guess I did the job right.  I didn't do a couple of tests to make sure oil was flowing before riding.

  That bring us up to today, the 26th.  For some time now I have know I was running really rich.  The bike ran great but was only getting 55mpg and worse against the wind.  Long story short, I installed a smaller main jet (130)and advanced the timing a bit.  Seems to be OK but tomorrow I do some plug chops and see.  I'm sure you can't wait to see what happens next............