Another won't start thread

Ok, I'm running again as of this morning. Once again it's a bit of a mystery and hard to tell what to learn from each of these experiences. It wouldn't start last night, I put the battery on a trickle charge over night, went out this morning and it fired up.

So something I did yesterday fixed it, but by then the battery must have been worn down and preventing it from starting. I'm used to what a dead (or weak) battery sounds like on a car and I didn't really hear anything like that yesterday and the battery was producing 12v according to my multimeter. But I guess it still must have been too weak.

I've learned that I've been verifying spark incorrectly. I didn't realize it was important to leave the other spark plug leads on when you're verifiying spark. I think I did that sometimes, but not others. Which explains why I frequently feel like I'm chasing my tail when tracking down ignition issues.

The new plugs have a nice fat blue spark. I then tested the old plugs that I just pulled out and they actually look just fine as well (though they were a little black and I'll need to adjust my mixture). So I don't think it was ever a problem with the plugs.

Sometime yesterday I noticed my headlamp wasn't on while I was testing for spark. I opened up the headlight bucket, checked the headlamp connections (all seemed fine) put it back together and the headlight came on. I'm now wondering if that short was causing the problem all along and I just hadn't noticed the light being out. And by the time I'd fixed that, I'd messed up some other stuff (I put the timing advancer cam on backwards) and worn down the battery. With the battery charged and all the stuff straightened out, the bike started up.

Aren't electrical gremlins just so much fun?

At any rate, glad you at least have her running now. Enjoy

Cool, good to here it is running again.

hahahahahahahahahaa

that is too rich

Topper wrote: After 700 failed attempts to start, it's pretty drained. I think it's time to put it on trickle charge and start again tomorrow.

I've not really made any progress. I can confirm that my concern with the kick starter was unwarrented. Bone head move #145 I had the clutch lever held with a strap to make checking for spark easier. Forgot it was there when I discovered the kick lever had no resistance. So at least that's explained.