And so it resumes

The utter fucking bastard!

I’m back in the shed of doom and decided to disconnect the fuel lines and see what happens. Nothing, that’s fucking what.

I’ll have the tank off and drain it by dropping the taps and see what the filters look like.

Edit: the main tap blew through perfectly but the reserve is almost completely blocked but there’s no debris on the filter so I suspect it may never have been fully clear. Both taps and filters are now in the ultrasonic cleaner.
 
Why did I have to neck a glass of home brew before the obvious becomes like a brick in the face?

Luckily I had a spare reserve tap so that went on, fuel in the tank, primed the carbs and it started first kick. It’s running a bit stop/misfire/start on the left hand cylinder but that can only be a dodgy connection or fuel starvation and given that the reserve tap feeds the right hand cylinder first that may be it.

Anyway,

f23c4311e50051372efb25cf197f0d8a.jpg


Yep, that’s the nice electronic tacho registering 1100 rpm
 
Having it running is a good place to stop and enjoy the sun for the rest of the afternoon.

It’s now running on the LH cylinder only and the plug is properly sooted up. The right hand one is wet but black so it was running and now it’s fallen out with me. I’ll have the tank off again and check all connections to the coils tomorrow in the hope that there’s something obviously loose (earth probably) then try to find where you fit take off tubes to balance the carbs and run a good old fashioned colourtune on it because they normally help. I’ll have a look around it to check for oil leaks before locking the shed of doom but overall it’s not been a bad day :D

The primary case is coming off tomorrow to check the air gap on the rotor because it’s still only showing 12.3v when it’s running and the alternator light stays on but it’s probably yet another loose wire after years of continuously messing about with it. I’ve got a factory manual that should help but I’m a total numpty when it comes to electrics so it might be a few years yet :D
 
Snelly wins the free biscuit for his suggestion regarding checking the air gap between the rotor and the stator.

I checked it with feelers and first off the stator was eccentric to the rotor and secondly the gap was too big. I’ve now removed the stator and checked the rotor which measures bang on 74mm with the stator measuring 75.25mm but that’s a bit of an odd size because the rotors apparently come in 74mm and 75mm sizes and the clearance would be too small with a 75mm rotor but the 75.25mm bore on the stator doesn’t equate to an imperial size :nenau

Not to worry, I’ll phone Andover Norton in the morning and and order a new stator to suit a 74mm rotor. They’re about £80 so sod all when viewed against everything else that’s gone into the money pit :D

I’ll need to move the casing around to get the gap concentric to the crankshaft but that’s just a case of releasing the tab washers, slacken the bolts and belt it with a plastic hammer.
 
I’ve spent most of the day trying to get the bike running properly rather than worrying about the charging system because I can’t check the charging unless I can hold it at 3k rpm and I didn’t want to do that if it wasn’t firing on both cylinders.

Because I’m not the sharpest knife in the draw I tend to assume that if something was right 18 months ago leaving it alone means it will still be right so I tried all sorts of things with the throttle stops and the mixture but it wasn’t having it so true to form I stopped, ate pork pie and a cheese sandwich while savouring a pint of 5.8% ABV home brew.

That gave me another eureka moment and I decided to check the timing because I might have only static timed it last time. Well being 8 degrees out wouldn’t be helping so I’ve set it to something resembling where it should be and there’s a marked improvement. Who’d have believed it? One strange thing is that after a few hours messing about a non charging battery still shows 12.7v with the engine stopped.whats all that about?

I don’t want to leave myself with nothing to do tomorrow and I visited the butchers today to get meat for a bbq (along with the pork pie) so I’ve got to feed my wife, daughter and youngest granddaughter. It’s not as if the Government are going to suddenly relax their rules so I’ve got plenty of time.
 
I can’t stop myself, todays plan didn’t involve the Notrun but I had to do it didn’t I?

Anyway, one thing that had bugged me was the fuel mixture and but I couldn’t check too much without taking the air box off and that’s a pain in the arse so I’ve stuck with messing with the mixture screws and that wasn’t cutting it but last night I had another beer fuelled eureka moment and thought am I actually using the choke lever the right way? Most bikes or cars you pull the cable to lift/open the choke but these are Amals which means they don’t play by the same rule book as me.

Just to double check I’ve taken the top off one of the carbs and sure as shit, the choke is a slide that needs lifting out of the airflow by pulling the cable :blast

Now that’s going to have everyone laughing because it’s obvious but the carbs originally fitted had lever chokes which worked in the way I’m used to and when I fitted these I didn’t bother paying too much attention to the simple things. This might also explain why it’s been a shit to start without giving it a sniff of Easystart to richen the mixture :blast:blast

If I’m lucky I’ll get it ticking over and then revving cleanly so I can actually start to check the charging circuit :beerjug:
 
I can’t stop myself, todays plan didn’t involve the Notrun but I had to do it didn’t I?

Anyway, one thing that had bugged me was the fuel mixture and but I couldn’t check too much without taking the air box off and that’s a pain in the arse so I’ve stuck with messing with the mixture screws and that wasn’t cutting it but last night I had another beer fuelled eureka moment and thought am I actually using the choke lever the right way? Most bikes or cars you pull the cable to lift/open the choke but these are Amals which means they don’t play by the same rule book as me.

Just to double check I’ve taken the top off one of the carbs and sure as shit, the choke is a slide that needs lifting out of the airflow by pulling the cable :blast

Now that’s going to have everyone laughing because it’s obvious but the carbs originally fitted had lever chokes which worked in the way I’m used to and when I fitted these I didn’t bother paying too much attention to the simple things. This might also explain why it’s been a shit to start without giving it a sniff of Easystart to richen the mixture :blast:blast

If I’m lucky I’ll get it ticking over and then revving cleanly so I can actually start to check the charging circuit :beerjug:

People running commandos with the choke on when they think it’s off is something that happens regularly. They always find it in the end but sometimes they’ve done a lot of other checks first:blast At least you have sussed it now. The other problem you may have getting it to idle especially if it’s been stood is the pilot system in the carbs, if you have replaced the carbs with premiers then it won’t be a problem but if you have std carbs the pilot system gums up and is a bugger to clear, although did I read you have a cleaner to Chuck the carbs in.................. It’ll all be worth it in the end :rolleyes:
 
The carbs are brand new and were drained after my last little foray so I was fairly confident the jets would be good. The bike didn’t soot the plugs up as much as yesterday but it still had an uneven idle on the left hand cylinder so I bit the bullet and took it off.

It’s a good job I did because the clip had come off the needle so it was just sitting there at the bottom of the slide. After fighting it back on I took the other carb off and that one was ok so 1 out of 2 isn’t too bad and it says a lot for the agricultural nature of a 46 year old bike that it actually ran like that.

I’ll probably leave it now because I’ve got domestic chores to do and after that I’ll just lock everything away for the night. I’ve got a set of smaller jets If needed and I’ll do a few more checks before putting the carbs back on because even with the cable adjusters fully backed off there’s no slack in the throttle cables.
 
Andy,
Which carb's have you got?
Mk1 Concentrics?

Yep. I was having issues with the bigger carbs so went right back to basics and purchased a pair of standard carbs.

I’ve just come in for dinner and the latest confusion is that if I change the slides and carb tops from side to side one way both drop down to within 0.25mm of being the same height, the other way there’s almost 0.75mm difference with everything backed off. They don’t drop when the cables are disconnected at the handlebars and they stay where they are when I connect the cables to the controls but there's absolutely no slack to take up At the adjusters. I’ve not started it since taking the carbs off so you never know, there might be an improvement tomorrow.

I’m only posting this lot to stop others feeling inadequate and to demonstrate that even idiots can eventually make progress with this kind of thing :D
 
Be careful
The cut away on the side for the throttle stop is not the same, so it pays to check.
Did these come from Surrey Cycles? If so give them a shout, as they are very helpful, and they work from home
 
The carbs came from Andover Norton but there’s no problem with phoning them, they’ve always been very helpful whenever I’ve needed them.

Because I marked which top came off which carb when I stripped them I know the that they were previously fitted with the bigger error on the slide heights when released so maybe that’s going to have improved things. I wasn’t sure what you meant by the cutaway height but it’s suddenly made sense so again, it might be that I had them the wrong way round the first time I fitted them :nenau

I’ve got plenty of time to be messing about and whereas previously it’s all been a bit haphazard with me flitting from job to job on the bike I’ve now decided to be more methodical because if it’s not running right I’m never going to be able to isolate what the problem is with the charging. It came back to me this afternoon that about 5 years ago I messed up and connected the battery with a negative earth so checking the zener diode might be a good starting point and my factory Norton manual is going to tell me exactly how to do it. There’ll be a lot more swearing than normal if it turns out that the answer has been sitting in the darkness between my ears all the time :D
 
Andy
A far better option would be to ditch the Zenner and put a modern reg/rec on the bike.
I did this on my old A65LC and it solved many problems in one swift moment.
Also if you are ever going to upgrade to the Alton electric start that id neg earth
 
Ok, who or where supplies a decent reg/rec that would do the job?

Because not only am I having plenty of time to mess with the bike I’m also not being paid due to being self employed so the electric start conversion is on hold but it’s almost certainly going to get one at some point, just not yet :D

If I can get the fuelling right I’ll be a lot happier holding the bike on 3k rpm while I check out the charging system without cooking the engine. One good thing is that apart from a slight weep from the right hand exhaust rocker cover that was cured by a quarter of a turn on a ring spanner it’s pretty much oil tight and when I had it nicely warmed up I managed to get just under a quarter of a turn on the right hand exhaust clamp ring so that might have improved things.

If you think this is entertaining wait until I take it on the road and start asking questions about brakes with no feel, suspension that feels odd and that pesky isolastic system :blast
 
Any modern Jap one will do. Just get the right one to suit the alternator 1 or 3 phase.
On the A65 I mounted it on the battery carrier

Near to us would probably be Cambridge M/cycles Cheddars lane Cambridge 01223 360176
 
Any modern Jap one will do. Just get the right one to suit the alternator 1 or 3 phase.
On the A65 I mounted it on the battery carrier

Near to us would probably be Cambridge M/cycles Cheddars lane Cambridge 01223 360176

Well I know where Cambridge Motorcycle is, Spike used to tune race engines for quite a few guys I knew and I bought my Kawasaki H2 from him for a remarkably low price after he bought it straight cash from a guy who torn knee ligaments and just wanted to get rid of it :D
 
So when you bought new std carbs, you didn’t go for “Premiers” these are std carbs but have a heavier slide, much better float which makes it easier to set level , and the big plus is the pilot jet system has been redesigned and gives perfect idle. Getting these was the first thing Norman White told me get even if I did nothing else, fit premiers.
 


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