what could it be?

Congrats on the bike! If the wife wants you to get rid of a bike or two, my garage has room:whistle:

How the hell can a bunch of smart engineers that work at the big K let such a design flaw slip by them ???
Mistakes like that are just dumb, dumb dumb. Imagine all the guys that have torn their hair out trying to sort something like that out......:ohmy:
Nice score, BTW....and great problem solving, too.
another valuable little factoid for my old memory banks.

For those of us who have not dealt with a twin, how does one determine if the points cam is on backwards? I'm sure the FSM shows the correct alignment procedure.

It seems as if you have the troubleshooting on the bike down so I'm gonna leave that alone. On the subject of White Russians, the next time you make one try adding a little Frangelico to it. This greatly improves the taste of the drink, actually it is called a Nutty Russian when you do this, but if you ask 9 out of 10 bartenders for a Nutty Russian they won't know what you are talking about. Cheers.

well i think the only way you can tell if it is backwards it to turn it around and see if it changes. i think you would have to assemble them everyday to notice it by eye, my foot was starting to hurt so i knew something was wrong. and the other tell was the 13mm and the 17mm under the points cover were a little goobered up from the P.O. so i just took a guess that the genius was in there messing around.
need to do some rear brake work this morning and then i am going to try to run it around the block

gringo, i will give it a try, but i do like the way they taste now

I would just like to say that this is probably the best & most fun post that I have read on here!!

I nominate flht1997 as "poster person of the day"

Good stuff!

Post edited by: bill_wilcox100, at: 2007/09/23 11:04

pic= essential tools, for sunday morning brake pedal repair.
just taped my cheap camera to my helmet for the first ride, but i had my aim a little off so it is just the ground going by real fast and alot of wind noise, but she runs goooooooooooooood! started in one kick this morning, and when warm the electric foot even can coax her to life. back brakes working good, chain is about shot, but will last the rest of this season, it is wisconsin so it is only a few more weeks.
so totals, 233.26 + 7.99 for 24 inches of fuel line, 4.72 for two fram fuel filters so 245.97 and it is rideable. it is fun taking chances on ebay, ya never know what you are going to find. i guess i got a low mileage, neglected, stored outside machine, that had some ham-fisted backyard boogerman owner, who just about made this machine junkyard food with their incompetance. i am glad i was able to step in and give it a second life.
youtube links to follow

Here i thought i was the only person to have their saturday or sunday breakfast on the garage floor :laugh: . This has inspired me to continue bidding on a couple of bikes currently on e-bay now.

ok, couple more pics and i am going to call it quits for the day. this P.O. truely is a great advisary, he did not belong working on this bike. headlight only worked on high beam and the high/low switch didn't do anything. pulled the light, and, of course, wire nuts! apparently he could not be bother to find the problem but had time to hit the building supplies and rewire the headlight. problem was traced back to a corroded connector at the fuse box and all is well. but since i was there and i do not trust this guy, i decided to see how good a job he did putting in the new ignition switch. so under all the electrical tape i found this.

so after i got that cleaned up, and repaired a couple bad grounds that mother nature had developed, i put the front back together. my last job for the day was to balance the carbs. and boy i tell ya, i actually look forward to this job. it takes about 2 minutes and you can leave the gas tank on!
readings before.

and then a simple twiddle of the screwdriver...ta-da...i am done