Monday, June 30, 2014

It's ALIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!!!1!

Woot woot!

The engine was completed recently, so I moved onto getting the carb set up.  It's on an elbow to move it forward so that the air cleaner doesn't tear my knee up.

Last week I tried to start it but was getting kick backs and back firing.  Combustion, but not the right kind!

Saturday (6/28), I looked on line for that guru-of-Shovel Hawg Ryder's picture drawing out the wiring for a kick only bike.  I found that I had it wired incorrectly.  Five minutes later, I fixed the wiring, prime kicked it, turned the switch on, and with one kick, it started!

It ran for a few seconds before I turned it off.  I called my dad, and without telling him, said, "Hey Dad, hold on a second.  I need to put the phone down for a minute."  I put the phone down, turned the ignition switch back on, and on the first kick, it started again.  I picked up the phone and he was laughing, "Man, I've been waiting a long time to hear that again."

Thirty.  Three.  Years.

Then there was trouble.  Or so I thought.  I'm running hydraulic lifters and they need to pump up with oil for proper operation.  For some reason I wasn't getting any oil to the heads or the push rods, so they were making an AWFUL racket, especially the front exhaust rod.  It sounded like a little gremlin in there pounding away with a hammer.

Because of this, I only ran it a few times, no longer than thirty seconds at a time, and letting it cool off completely between.  Still, no oil.

On Sunday (6/28) I bought an oral medicine syringe and used it to force oil into all the lines.  I filled the rocker boxes, pulled the feed line to the rear box and filled it, and filled the return line.  Then I kick it over again.

And found out that I had forgotten to plug the return line back into the oil tank, so I spilled a quart of oil all over the ground, because now the engine was pumping oil!  I killed the engine, hooked up that line, and then kicked it again.  In a minute or so, the clattering from the push rods went away.

I'm only running single plugs now because I don't have dual coils for points.  I have a 5ohm coil for my points ignition and a set of 3ohm coils for electronic ignition.  Eventually I'll get a matching electronic iggy, but for now, it fires and runs great on points.  When I do it correctly, it fires on the first kick.

It's still a little lean, I think, because at idle it spits and misses.  I'll double check the timing and the pilot jet next.





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