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Got the brakes put back on the bike. No road testing for a couple of weeks at least. Doubt that I could get out of the yard since the ground is very soft right now. Everything seems to be working now, need to get it listed for sale.

Got in a couple trips around the block and the brakes are much better. I was a little nervous after my last ride. Need to adjust the plunger on the back brake, engages way too quick. This is gonna make a nice bike for someone.

You must be healing well, glad to read that.

Healing process is going well. Some aches and such but it won't keep me from doing the things I want to do. Follow up visit to the doctor is Monday, expect a full release.

Great news, both about the bike, and the healing process!

Forgot to relay I got a full release from the doctor. I'm back at doing as much as I feel up to. Still some aches and pains if I do too much or let the shoulder get cold. Been on the bike a couple of times but not very far yet. Probably not going to do any more on this one and just put a 'FOR SALE' sign on it and move on.

Good to see your recovery is going well. Time will improve things for you. Best of luck with the sale .

Liam wrote:Good to see your recovery is going well. Time will improve things for you. Best of luck with the sale .

Ditto!

This bike is still having a slow start issue. The starter spins the engine fine with the kill switch engaged. Switch it to start and it drags like crazy. Same results with alternate starter. I still believe the timing is off. When I replaced the arm in the advance unit, had no idea how many turns to thread the arm to the shaft. The bad part is the unit is on the back side of the motor and the only way to reach it is to drop the swing arm or pull the motor. Need to hook up a timing light to get an idea when exactly it is firing. Good news is it sounds and runs great once it gets started. Sure makes it hard to sell when it is so hard to get started.

I suspect a bad contact between battery and starter. Metering on volt scale while cranking at battery (could be bad), solenoid posts, and starter post. Somewhere allong there is a poor connection. All the kill switch ON adds is the ignition coils. They appear to be adding enough extra load to overcome that poor connection's ability to flow current. Like a house with a bad restriction in the water lines, and while you are taking a shower someone flushes a toilet.

I'll try going straight off the battery with an external power cable to see if there is any improvement. If so, that would be a small blessing. It would be a lot easier to upgrade the power cables than to pull the swing arm. Thanks

I have found not only bad, corroded connections, but the connectors themselves not conducting to the wire due to corrosion. Also, old solenoids get arc damage and develop high resistance.

pidjones wrote:I suspect a bad contact between battery and starter. Metering on volt scale while cranking at battery (could be bad), solenoid posts, and starter post. Somewhere allong there is a poor connection. All the kill switch ON adds is the ignition coils. They appear to be adding enough extra load to overcome that poor connection's ability to flow current. Like a house with a bad restriction in the water lines, and while you are taking a shower someone flushes a toilet.

pidjones, I will indeed check on all these connections the next opportunity I get to spend time and endure the weather since I have to work outside. Not sure if you have followed this project for very long but starting about page four things got interesting. This is where my comments about ignition timing are coming from. Turning on the kill switch as described also allows the plugs to fire and if that happens too early, I feel the early combustion is causing a big part of my problem. Of course I may be wrong and only time and persistence will tell.

You probably know this, but 80 and maybe 81 models used 13 degrees BTDC for ignition while later years used 10 degrees. Since you got the arm from an unknown source, could it be the wrong one? That is quite a bit of advance for starting. I know on my points bikes it behaves as you describe when too advanced.

I don’t recall seeing any info on setting the timing by adjusting that arm in or out.

I did not know the degree settings, hadn't crossed that bridge yet. The additional three degrees plus the wrong a wrong arm could present quite an offset. Still have a lot to learn here.