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.