SIP Update

Well, I'm pretty bored with this whole Covid Shelter-In-Place thing. I don't have it quite as bad as some others- since I'm a healthcare worker, I need to go out and get to my job. But still, on my days off, I'm here at home trying to keep busy with whatever I can.

Today, I decided to get working again on Angie, my RD400. When I left off at the end of last season, I still needed to get the bike properly jetted. I messed around with a few carb configurations, but it actually resulted in killing the bike altogether. For about a week, I tried to get the motor to fire, but it was a done deal :(

I woke up early. Got some coffee in me and started picking at the bike. I hunted down the original carb configurations for when I had my first successful start and I figured I'd go from there. I swapped out the main jets from 280's back to 260's. I found that I had put in 27.5 pilot jets, so I returned them to 30's. I checked the needle position and the A/F mixture screw. I double-checked my plugs to make sure that I wasn't running 7's. I made sure they were gapped to 0.025-0.028". I wasn't entirely sure if which plug wires went to which plugs, so it was going to be a crapshoot. After a few unsuccessful attempts, the bike finally roared back to life! It ran hella smokey and the idle was high, but at least it was running again!

While I was tooling around the bike today, I also installed the aftermarket horn, although I didn't bother yet to clean and paint the mount.

Last year, when I put her to bed, I was thinking of doing to jetting myself, but now I think I'm over it. There's a shop in Martinez that can tune it in. I spoke with them last year. They had just finished doing an RZ350 and they were comfortable with 2-strokes. I think they quoted me around $500, which is pricey, but I just want it done correctly.

The majority of what still needs to get done is the jetting and the last parts of the electrical that I haven't been able to get working yet- the brake light and the turn signals. I found a small shop in Livermore that said they could hunt down the electrical problems. I'm in the home stretch!

My Church of Motorcycle

Lately I've had a lot of little stuff going on, so I've just been picking at the bike little by little. I picked all the parts off the original frame and started installing them on the Primose frame. I got the engine in there and installed the new headset in the frame, then installed the forks. Funny thing (not so funny)- when I was torquing the triple crown nut down and had the forks flopped all the way over to one side, that small amount of effort knocked off the front steering lock stop that I had brazed onto the frame! I was astounded at how weak the bond was! Maybe when the frame went into the oven after powdercoating (twice) it weakened the braze? In any case, I had to sand down the surrounding surface and braze it on again!

Then there's that same problem that I had before with the front wheel bearings. After torquing the front axle, the spacer got smashed in there between both bearings that the bearings wouldn't spin anymore. So I thought that it might be different after I put in the new bearings- perhaps the old bearings were so loose that they moved too much. Well, after putting the new set of bearings in, the same thing happened! Argh!!! I think I'm going to just add a thin shim between one of the bearings and the spacer, hoping that it would create some relief. I'll get to that later- that problem isn't going anywhere.

I also had an issue that had been bugging me for a while- the pre-bent kickstarter lever that I bought from another forum member did not clear the Tarrozzi rearset peg. I somehow thought that it could be an issue with fitment from the Marsh frame, so I decided I would revisit the problem when I swapped the motor to the Primrose frame. Guess what?! The problem didn't go away!

I knew that the PO had purchased that kickstart lever from HVC and I also had the feeling like Fast From The Past had the exact same product, so I emailed them both to see if they knew of a fix. Brad from HVC had a fairly useless (unhelpful) response. Jim from FFTP suggested that perhaps the "boss" was not straight (the piece that actually clamped onto the spline). Since I had the original boss, I swapped out the parts, but it yielded the same results. I emailed the guy I bought the kickstarter from, just to give him a shout. He was very receptive and offered the refund my money if I chose to return it. I did still have the option of throwing some heat at the lever (the original straight lever for that matter), but I didn't really want to discolor the chrome. Part of me was saying that I shouldn't have to modify an already modified part- it should work as it was designed to work. I saw that there was a new and improved lever that HVC and FFTP was selling now. Jim said that if I bought a new lever from him and it didn't clear the peg, I could return it, so I pulled the trigger and bought another new lever. After almost 2 weeks of dicking around with this problem, I put the new lever on and guess what?! It clears the peg!! I emailed Jim and shared the good news. Problem solved!

So today I got a bunch of stuff done! I mounted the license plate and LED bolts (only to find out later that I had to rip it off the frame, since it wouldn't clear the rear tire), and the rear turn signals. I cut and installed the rear fender. I cabled up the carburetors and oil injector pump, then synced and adjusted the play on them. I installed all the carb overflow hoses. Then I mounted the rear wheel, cut and installed the chain. (That was a bitch, since I couldn't press out the pin, then I finally realized that I had 2 chain breaker tools sitting in my tool drawer!) I installed the clutch cable and adjusted the clutch lever. The clutch lever itself was a little sticky, so I had to sand down the surfaces a little to relieve the pressure points.

All in all, it was a pretty productive day. More positives than negatives. Can't beat that with a stick.

Carbs Done with their Cleaning

Today I had a glimpse into the future. This is how I picture my retirement- sitting at the breakfast table scrubbing vintage motorcycle parts, while cooking shows on the Food Network play in the background. What more could I want?

Finally I'm done with all the scrubbing and polishing. I would say that each carburetor took about six hours of labor. The carbs look good as new!

It was a task that obviously had to get done, not only for the sake of their ungodly appearances, but to clean out all that crap that's been sitting on the insides for the past ten plus years. The last time I ever tinkered with them, I had close to no mechanical experience with motorcycles, so when I had jetting problems, I turned to the "professionals", taking the bike to small two-stroke shops. Well, I found all sorts of little parts missing like washers and a spring.

Lots of parts needed attention. The slide in the left carb was frozen in place- gunk had solidified and glued it into place. Both needle jets needed to get popped out- there was so much corrosion and grit in the emulsion tubes- the jets are wasted. The air jets were caked with solid gunk, like barnacles on to a rock. The corrosion was so bad in the left carb float assembly that it had eaten away a good portion of the main jet support. I'm ordering new o-rings and gaskets as well as a spring for both carburetors.

Here are some before and after pictures of the carbs. My method of cleaning them 1) soak and scrub them in a cocktail of kerosene and carb cleaner 2) scrub them with Barkeepers Friend then 3) polish the parts with Never-Dull. Hence six hours per carb.

Got Sidetracked

For some reason, I just felt like working on the carbs today. I pulled both carbs out of the holding box and examined them closely. Maybe it was the simple challenge of getting them to look new again, but I was so inclined to just begin working on those before yanking the motor. It was certainly a shorter and easier goal to achieve- the satisfaction of success was just days away, rather than months away. So I grabbed the right carb, since I knew it wasn't stuck, plus it was the simpler of the two, since there was no choke assembly to mess with. The arduous process began.