New Year New Bike

I found my way clear to getting someone to work on Spike. Much thanks to Jason Glatt of suicidalcycles. Spike was very hard to start with her new motor and it was a real bitch at first but a lot has happened since January.

I didn't find her getting any better, in fact it got much worse. I tried a bunch of things including a block heater, but most everything failed.

Handoverphist found a site that was all about detailed repairs and troubleshooting of your XJ. There are a lot of XJ lovers out there, and I was pleased that so many people were willing to help. Much thanks goes out to Rickomatic on xjbikes.com. He steered me in the right direction, getting me to clean my carbs all the way. I ran through this particular activity about 3 times before I was satisfied that they were clean already. I'll be posting details from our conversations shortly, in case they'll be of help to anyone else.

In the end, the carb cleaning did not solve the hard start. After putting the bike back together she still would not turn over. I went back and forth on the site, seeking a solution, and even went so far as to pull out my starter and tear it apart. It turned out in the end that my spark plugs were the biggest problem. I swapped them out and she jumped to turn over.

This is not the end of the saga. The bike has been fine tuned on the mixture, but I'm not sure I've done it right and would love a set of Colortune plugs to verify that. She still doesn't like a cold start. There is still a bit of a skip to her and total lack of power off the line, although she goes well enough once she's warm. I plan on swapping out the old school (now missing) air filter with K&N cones. Mileage is up to a whopping 213km/10l tank. I don't know what that works out to, but it's as good as she got before, so I'm somewhat satisfied.

I enjoy doing the work on my bike myself, and have learned how to do a variety of things, but I'm still a rank amateur. I am hoping to purchase a project bike this summer in the XJ line, that I can have the fully satisfying experience of completely bringing back to life. We'll see.

Just About a Month Later...

...I haven't had any time for repairs, and the weather took a turn for the worse on December 1. Just before that happened, I had the foresight to move Jason's "smoking area" to the upstairs balcony, and move Cherry under the shelter, recovering everything with a couple of blue tarps for safekeeping. It's well and truly stored til I have the props in that I need to get the engine moved. I'm going to check into rental places to see about bringing in some sort of hoist.

I tried, just randomly, turning the engine over. I think it would have gone, but for the battery which was damn near dead. I need to charge both batteries on both bikes, and test from there to see what's what. Although I don't doubt this engine is pristine, I do wish I'd made the guy who sold it to me turn it over. He kept saying that it would but I never made him. Twit.

Ah well. I'm going to see what Christmas brings and regroup after, trying to use some of that time for really good work on the project.

Spike Has a Blowout

At some point in Septemberish, I'm sure that it was my fault, Spike blew a big hole in the bottom of her motor. It was very sad for me, I didn't realize how much I identified myself as a motorcycle rider, and my neglect of Spike had brought us to this pass, I'm sure. Having read up on it, and in hindsight, I'm sure the oil burning problem had gone farther than I thought.

We retrieved her from the Number One the same night, brought her home and snugged her in. I wasn't sure what I would do next. With the aid of a carpool, some of the urgency was taken out of it for me so I had the time to decide. I took that time, and thought about it, and despite the work involved and being relatively new to motorcycle repair, I decided to fix her. I know this means replacing the engine, among other things to get her back to good.

Finally we had break in the weather, so on a particularly sunny evening, I pulled her tank off and prepped her for a new engine, getting right down to the point where her engine could be removed, but not quite removing it.

This was a long and involved process, took about two noob days altogether. I started by emptying the gas tank which involved pulling the seat off the bike, undoing the bolt that holds the tank on and gently easing the tank up and back. It may have been better to disconnect hoses first but I wasn’t sure what would happen or whether gas would flow if I did that, so I didn’t. My petcock doesn’t have an off position (does anybody’s?) so I left it on and loosened the two hoses from the bike, leaving them attached to the petcock. Sparky (Jason’s bike) was low on fuel, and rather than store, I figured I’d drain what I could as I could, making sure that there was no fuel left sitting for who knows how long.

I knew I’d be pulling the engine at some point, no matter what, so I proceeded through the steps in the guide which told me: remove the engine guard (a home jobby out of heavy duty stainless tubing that was on the bike when we bought it), remove the exhaust, which I did, with the help of friends to move the bits and hubby and I to lift the bike in absence of another hoist method. It was VERY HEAVY. I began pulling bits off the bike like pegs, side panels and “air filter”. The air filter on this bike seems to be just a big empty junction box that funnels up to underneath the seat, the logic being that your ass filters everything required? I’m not sure. I think this is about where I thought to read the book and see what it said about removing the carburetor. It seemed like it would be very hard. It wasn’t, it was, in fact VERY EASY. The carbs are set behind the engine and separated from it and from the air intake by sets of rubber…I’ll call them flanges. I can’t remember what the right term is just now. Once you pull the clamps off the flanges you can reach in and pull the rear ones out, they just sort of push into place. Then you pull the carbs off, then the front flanges can come. Now the engine is standing solo. There are electric leads that must be removed from the sparks and the alternator. We labeled all the cables and taped them to the frame so they wouldn’t get in the way when we went to pull the engine.The engine mount bolts on this bike were VERY tough to pull. Everyone had a stab at it, taking upwards of 40 minutes altogether, but it was the donkey determination of my 16 year old nephew, with the help of a hot and cheering chicky that finally did the job. I recommend getting one of these handy tools for your garage, if you can possibly manage it.

There was nothing more I could do at this point, so we rolled Sparky into dry storage and I began the hunt for her new engine. In two months I had not much luck finding one that was in satisfactory shape that could be swapped out. I had sort of given up and thought I'd list the bike as parts for sale. I did so, but with no action on that post either. Finally someone came to look, but in the process of lowballing our suggested price, which I refused, the fellow lets me know that his bike could be bought for a mere $300. It was in an accident and has frame and cosmetic damage, but the engine is just fine. Voila! He sent me some pics and the bike looks fine.

So I run back to my original plan of taking the winter to fix Spike up for Spring. We get the new bike home. She is christened Cherry (after Cherry 2000 tho she is already dead), and use her as parts to recycle my old love. Spike should be fit come Spring with luck and determination, and what's the next step? A careful cleaning and labeling for all parts for both bikes, to get them prepped for the engine swap.

NEXT UP: Cleaning Spike's old parts
Pulling Cherry's parts,
Cleaning Cherry's parts

If you have any thoughts on cleaning parts, or technical knowhow on swapping out an engine, please send ‘em my way, cuz this noob may have bit off more than she can chew!