Idiot v. Motorbikes, Rounds 3, 4, and 5

[melville]

Bits of progress. I cleaned up the prongs on the starter relay and got a good spin out of the thing. NANANANANANANA!

So next was setting up the throttle cables and the fuel system. I installed the tank and got a couple gallons of ethanol-free and felt hopeful.

NANANANANA pop pop NANA pop NANANANANANA pop. But not quite enough to keep going when I took my thumb off the button.

So I checked all four plug wires with a spare plug to see if I had spark all around. Top left seemed to be without spark, so I checked at the coil. This was the result:



Humph! Aftermarket coils with an odd connection scheme. I slept on it and went to the local auto parts store this morning. To his credit, he didn't ask what it was from and just grabbed the coil and the bits and went to the back room. 10 minutes later, he came back. "Nope. What's it from?" "It's an aftermarket coil on an old BMW motorcycle." The coils smell Japanese. As it turns out, they were 12V and wired in parallel.

When I got home, I took the other coil off and found more troubles:



I'm kinda unwilling to spend too much money on this one, so I dug through my stuff and found the old coils from Ernst and set things up with just the top plugs hooked up, and 6V coils wired in series. Then with a good hot charge on the battery I took another stab at the starting it up. NANANANANA pop pop NANA pop NANANANANANA pop. But not quite enough to keep going when I took my thumb off the button. Humph!

Maybe to get a bit more juice to the starter, I took off the supplemental taillights. Here's how they were wired in to the existing taillight:



OMG! More posilocks! AND A WIRE NUT! I cut the wires off and removed the license plate frame which, as it turns out, was what held the additional lights:



Another go at it. NANANANANA pop pop NANA pop NANANANANANA pop. But not quite enough to keep going when I took my thumb off the button. Humph!

I did a quick run through the carburetors to make sure I had the chokes on the correct sides and that the chokes and pilot jets could pass fuel. Once more: NANANANANA pop pop NANA pop NANANANANANA pop. But not quite enough to keep going when I took my thumb off the button. Humph!

I talked my son into pushing the bike half a block up the hill to see if we could bump start it. I can bump start Ernst all by myself on the flat, so I didn't think there'd be much to it. RUN RUN PUSH PUSH into second gear clutch out SKID. Humph!

Imma think about this overnight. I will say that there was enough pop in the NANANANA that the headers warmed up a bit. So close!

[gspd]

melville repeatedly said: But not quite enough to keep going when I took my thumb off the button. Humph!

Have you checked that there is still power to the coils after starter button is released?

[melville]

I'll check that next.

Today I worked on a couple strokes of the 4 stroke cycle. Suck Squeeze Pop and Puey are the usual ones. I started by checking Squeeze. With the carbs off (CV carbs) both cylinders quickly got to 110-115ish psi cold. Squeeze probably OK.

I was concerned about Puey. Both mufflers were rusted through. This pile of rust showered down from my previous adventures in trying to make the thing run:



And both mufflers were clearly perforated:





I removed all the hardware:



There's some foreshadowing in that pic. The mufflers weren't budging from the headpipes. OK then, one is not truly committed to a project until the Sawzall comes out:



I'd been concerned that all that rust had blocked the muffler, preventing the proper amount of Puey.

But trying to start it again, NANANANANA pop pop NANA pop NANANANANANA pop. But not quite enough to keep going when I took my thumb off the button.

Next up was checking the ignition timing. All the flywheel marks save the "F" mark had been obliterated in the lightening process. I used Ernst as a reference to find the proper difference between "F" and "S". Turns out, it's about six teeth on the flywheel. The static timing was closer to 12 teeth at the white possible TDC mark, so the next step was to advance things. I got the static timing close to the "S" zone and tried again. NANANANANA pop pop NANA pop NANANANANANA pop. But not quite enough to keep going when I took my thumb off the button.

Turning the motor over to reset the timing revealed that the starter wasn't necessarily disengaging. ARRGH!

The next installment will include starter removal and some time dicking with the engagement/disengagement mechanism and some judicious use of starting fluid. If I get some loud results, Ernst will be loaning his mufflers for some road tests. It's about time to repolish all that SS exhaust anyway.

[Rob Frankham]

I think my next trick would be to remove the plugs, pour a little petrol (sorry, gasoline) into each cylinder, replace the plugs and try to start it... Simple and crude but I've known it breathe life into many a reluctant engine before... Very often, once you've actually got the thing to run it'll start quite happily afterwards...

Rob

[Zombie Master]

Man ......that is a project!

[melville]

Ye gods, it's been a while! I've had work and a carpentry project over to my pillion's house. But I'm ready to get back to this.

Ernst claimed his battery back, and I'm not into pulling it back and forth now that the weather's nice. But many thanks to the IRS for sending me a stimmy! I went to Interstate Battery and spent it on AGMs for Edgar and my car. Edgar's looks like this:



Ernst has the same one, but with '30' where this one is '32'. Apparently they now make them '2' better. What I really like about these is that they are just a touch narrower than the OG wet battery and this is possible:



Yes, the battery can be installed from above, without disassembling the airbox. I do have to back out one of the subframe screws for clearance.

As most carburetion problems are electrical in nature, I left off back in January about to install the NOS German points but found this as I started the job:



So I got a new condenser from EME and put that on, along with the points today. This was the result:

https://youtu.be/psXb5ZcjEIM

I did a little fiddling to get the timing right (well, close enough) and I felt brave enough to take it around the block. No mufflers! Loud as Fuck! My neighbor is an old friend of my pillion and I'm sure I disturbed her Kundalini meditation. I'll apologize the next time I see her.

The 1/2 mile report is good. Lotsa power, more than I'd expect from 1000cc compared to Ernst's 750, so there probably was some headwork done. Looks like the rear main seal might be leaking. Here's where Edgar is now:



I'll probably install the headlight from the fairing and run through a tankful of gas and then evaluate what needs doing. This, after doing something about the exhaust. I'm checking for some Harley take-off mufflers for now, as they can be had for $50 or less.

[Tom H Ca]

Not sure if the mufflers are the same as my R75/5. If so, Amazon and fleabay have them at a fair price. I think Emgo? If they are the same brand that was sold by JC Whitney, they have held up fine for about 10 or so years.

Tom

[melville]

While waiting for mufflers I did a couple little things. First I spent a few minutes with the Dremel getting the remains of the old mufflers off:



Then I installed the headlight in the bucket. Probably the first time it's been in there since the bike was sold 40+ years ago:



The cardboard is to check for oil drips as I run the bike. It can help a lot with locating a leak, especially if you put the centerstand in the same divots each time.

Meanwhile, the younger son sent this:



He picked up an R80 (former RT) cafe project. It's a Monolever. It's at his mother's house for now but will come here for him to work on. She won't let him work on it there. I'm just a little envious of the dual Brembos up front. But you know, brakes only slow you down!

[kmisterk]

This is cool. I just went through the entirety of the progress and that looks like it's been one hell of a journey so far.

Definitely following for future updates!

[melville]

I'm through the big deadline at work and had a little time today to work on mounting the Harley mufflers my friend dropped off a month ago. Yesterday I went to a muffler shop and had a couple reducers made. They took a little modding to work with moto exhaust clamps. Muffler shops use U-bolts that distort the pipe to get a seal. Moto stuff uses flat clamps so one can remove and replace as necessary. A little mod was required to get the adapter to clamp down on the header pipes:



Just a few minutes with Dremel and drill to put three slots in each one.

Safely mounted:



And with the mufflers on:



I have a little work to do rigging a muffler support in the next few days. I'll probably dangle some steel from the Krauser rack with an Adel clamp.

These aftermarket Harley mufflers, that were actually too loud for my friend on his Road King, were also pretty damn loud on a BMW. One can see straight through them. I fired Edgar up and the first word to mind was THROATY!!! But I did get my ATGATT on and took him out for about 10 miles. I rode like I was breaking in some new rings, on and off the throttle and through the gears. He's pretty fast! I ran up to 5K rpm in 2nd and 3rd, and up to 4K in 4th. Nice *pop*pop*pop* on overrun! Earplugs will be required.

There don't appear to be any oil leaks. Unlike Ernst, who was moving lots of oil out the PR tubes and some other spots when I first fired him up.

Next steps will include:
* a couple hundred miles riding
* changing the trans, shaft and FD oil
* a compression test and seeing if I need to do anything with the top end
* rebuilding the fork with new seals and gaiters
* regreasing the head bearings
* making friends with the upholstery guy in the neighborhood to get a new pad and cover on my Flanders backrest
* getting some quieter mufflers, probably Keihans
* remounting the Luftmeister and riding off with my pillion on various hot spring adventures