Petrol’s a nasty thing, and carburettors are normally full of it. Until it evaporates - in which case they’re full of nasty ex-petrol-goo. The carbs on the project bike are made of aluminium alloy and they’ve been in the weather by the looks of it, so they’re coated in a lot of nasty white corrosion on the outside. The throttle’s jammed and I’m hoping that’s just a wasp nest or the aforementioned white crap. This is even before I’ve gotten them off the bike!
They’re going to need a full rebuild - today I pulled the trigger on buying a pair of “full” rebuild kits from K&L (#18-2596). After paging through Amazon, various local manufacturers and finally eBay, I ended up going with eBay. I can’t be bothered spending hours on weekdays calling around to dodgy motorcycle parts suppliers, then weekends driving around and picking things up. I’m sure I’ll be doing that enough as it is - and online shopping for small parts is an easy way to avoid buying random things off shelves 🙂
I’ve been working hard on listing out everything I can think of that needs to be done to the bike, with all the different dependencies and what I can do in ordered chunks. The first and most obvious thing that I can identify is that the carbs need a lot of work.
- Before I can take out the carbs, I need to make sure the fuel tank’s empty so I can take it off.
- To do that, I need to power up the fuel pump to drain the tank - the fuel pump is the petcock on this bike, and if I can avoid sucking gas, so be it.
- Before I can do THAT I need to ensure that powering up the bike isn’t going to set fire to it.
- Before I can do that, I need to separate the wiring into individual circuits so I can test things individually. Pull fuses and relays, remove bulbs and so forth.
- And there’s first my stop point - disable all the things!
It’s a fun puzzle, pulling something this complex apart and then putting it all back together - there’s plenty of photos to take, and many snap-lock bags full of little tiny pieces will be filled. There’s big jobs and small jobs, which intermingle into a huge eventuality.
I’ve got all the time in the world as there’s no rush to get this on the road for a trip, and it’s not going to be a daily ride, so there’s no point rushing any of them. It’s just for the fun of it, and that’s the best reason I can think of.
Oh, and I built a GaragePuter!