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2020/11/22 – Desperate

Spent way too long messing with the bike. Stripped it way down to swap starters, only to have that make no difference. Also swapped carbs, hoping to solve the low power (just off idle) issues, and if anything that made things worse. Finally tweaked that it could be the starter clutch slipping, and swapped that out (success). And the carb runs well enough if the idle is turned WAY down.

I bought an innovate air/fuel meter, haven’t yet gotten a O2 sensor bung welded into a header, hope to have that monday… but preliminary testing with the sensor wrapped in a rag and using a welding glove to stuff it up the exhaust pipe suggests that both my idle and low power mixtures are quite rich.

It seems that the “richen” the mixture until peak rpm is reached, and don’t go any farther advice is actually pretty close to 14.7. I’ve been going richer from there as it seemed to make the bike tractor better (e.g. harder to stall at idle). Somewhere along the way I raised the needle, that was probably a mistake. I did recently downsize the main jet to 155 which made the last half of the throttle work right, before it just changed the exhaust tone.

Anyhow, got out for a bit of a burn through the Oliphant area. Malahat gate was open for firewood collection! Left shortly after 9, home around 1, did get quite wet, but did not see anything that would qualify as rain.

Oh, right, clutch. Clutch gave me grief on the Heather Mtn trip. I ended up making a bit of a test setup for measuring springs. That worked surprisingly well, but I might still end up needing/using washers … or chasing up some newer springs. There was one or two times today when I wasn’t sure the clutch was holding, but by the same token, I wasn’t babying the bike either.

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400 SM rebuild (Ryan’s old bike).

I picked up a pair of DRZs at the start of June. Ryan’s black SM and a blue S (Shane’s). I thought I’d use this (long) post to cover the story of the SM rebuild.

I’d heard about the bike at least a year earlier from Karl. “DRZ SM with a knock”. Ryan and I had exchanged messages, but I figured I’d likely need to replace the crankshaft at least some of the bearings, rings, and get a valve job done. The numbers didn’t look great. A year later, mention of the bike came up, and the price had dropped.

Continue reading “400 SM rebuild (Ryan’s old bike).”
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2020/09/10 – been quiet !?

Yes/no. I’m still working on the August 13th to 24th trip write up.

As is sort of normal, I took a bit of time off of moto-stuff after that… a good 10 days or so … which did include “wrenching on the TrailBlazer” (transfer case motor was shot, which I figured out after pulling the whole case).

I’ve been face down in the 400SM since, my bike needs attention, but the SM bottom end was sitting on the table, and a more logical starting point.

My bike had some issues that reflect that while I’ve been wrenching lots, it was not on my bike. (By that token, the 400S is basically done and sold. The SM bottom end is done, new jug and piston are in … just wondering what I’m doing for valves and a head … which is a story in itself … I ordered new intake valves … not sure what I got.)

Anyhow, my bike is basically down (starter barely works and runs rough in 3rd).

I only JUST got to washing the dirt from 10 days riding off of it … but there’s enough stuff strewn across the carport that I’m not sure I want to start tearing another bike apart… and given that I seem to have a bottom end problem (3rd gear specific), it isn’t going to be a simple fix. I could swap head/piston jug to my spare bottom end as a quick fix (losing my ACT gears), and I’ll probably do that … but it’s still not a quick fix.