Cylinder not firing?

Your a good man TTR.

 

Yes he is, appreciate your time and knowledge man, not a lot of people are willing to help out for nothing more than a handshake and a thank you....Although once its road-worthy, I owe you a case of beer!

 

package is on the way bro. so looks like carb cleaning time

 

yup. The guy that runs this place has a very very old violin he's letting me re-store (seem to have a lot of fix-me-now projects this year) so i can learn to play, and the strings are trash....but I bet the smallest string would work like a charm to clean those tiny jets. So hopefully tomorrow, or this weekednd, I'll get some carb cleaner and hook my compressor up and go to town. Everything will be absolutely spotless. We're talking toothbrush on the float bowl, small wire through every hole and jet, carb cleaner sprayed through each hole like crazy followed by compressed air, followed by carb cleaner, followed by more compressed air, ect. You get the picture, church-of-clean is the phrase I believe. I need this baby running soon, school started today!

And it would be nice to get back to seeing my armor-making friend. Got a pair of mid-gothic period knees I was in the process of making that I'd really like to finish. Plus, I could make some custom side covers to help protect my jury-rigged electrical system.

What do you guys think of buying most of my electrical system and replacing it all back to stock? I think they changed the fuse box, my speedometer had the wires cut off it, and my petcock got the same treatment. most of my wires seem solid, good insulation and not much corrosion on the connectors, which makes me think they really did redo most of it

 

thanks again skw! once I clean the carbs, that color tune is going to be cool to use. I'm a tech guy, or in other words a geek, so i love neat technology. And the color tune qualifies!

 

and good luck with school this year. My daughter started back today (UWF)

I took her on the bike and that is one insane scene kids everywhere!

 

yeah, valencia west campus is pretty packed at the begging of the year too. Reminds me of my old overcrowded highschool.....thanks for the good luck. I got a pretty smart geek friend that works with me here, any problems I come across going for my programming degree he should be able to help. Just have to remember to do the homework and not forget about tests lol

 

NO - NO -STOP -STOP !!

You don't dis-connect the battery from a running motorcycle to check the alternator, and you don't jump from a running car either.

It can fry some of the delicate electronics on-board.

(and I called, too)

 

GET THIS GUY A MANUAL AND MAKE SURE HE READS IT, WILLYA?

 

phone is dead, sry lol. Ok, so i won't do that.....that was a trick mentioned by the harley mechanic btw, not something i would of done on my own. I'll wait until I have a multimeter....i think he has one somewhere in his shed...

 

See I warned you about those Hog mechs.

Don't forget to 'clunk' test your carbs and if they fail use some fine grit sandpaper to smooth them out. Multimeter's are really cheap you'll need one. Your wires might still be stock-depends on where the bike was stored. Mine just needed some cleaning where they connect. Petcock-yes back to original good idea. Speedometer-yes need one of those. Fuse box if it's new and it works it's ok. Custom side covers-why not.

Pilot on #4 sounds just like my #1 & #2 which had chunks of 'something' blocking them up and cold pipes. Research your carbs like you would one of your hard finals-after consulting about 3 or 4 sources and reading all the material there is, you will feel confident you can do anything to them. One warning: take one carb apart first and take notes/pictures and stay organized-this is a must do to prevent major frustration unless your a carb expert which I wasn't, but luckily I followed the advice given.

I did find some carbs for the 550's listed on ebay listed as NOS (new old stock) never before installed. They looked like it too (carb porn), and priced like it as well $999!! But bigfitz's point is spot on because all the parts in these old carbs can be replaced and after a complete cleaning and new parts as needed they ARE as good as new.

Good luck in your new semester and don't forget to study in-between wrenching 8⌐;

 

Well, I'm swamped for the next day or so, one of my web client's is pushing for a completed site much sooner than expected, and I've got some assignments to do, on top of building a database and integrating it with our untangle server and setting up an html face with login id's for the staff and board members to check info and such....*sigh* looks like i won't be touching the carbs until this weekend possibly. I'm going to miss my friday of golf too =(

 

There's been far, far worse bikes brought back to life here at XJBikes.
You absolutely NEED front brakes driving in Orlando, this might look tacky, but wrap the fork tubes with duct tape and terry cloth (to absorb any further fork oil) and de-grease your pads and your front brakes will work as-is, until you can tend to them properly.

 

thats the harley guys harley in the background btw, for anyone who's curious...

It's looking like this weekend I'll be cleaning my carbs. Gonna be a week or two until I get myself in a set schedule to deal with all the stuff I have to do everyday, especially since school just got tossed into the mix. But with a little help from google calender I'm expecting to have everything I need to make the bike 100% functional by mid-January, and finish with cosmetics by the end of February.

P.S. If you look closely you can see the sock I zip-tied over the first pod...the shiny back fell off =(

 

Alright ladies and gentlemen, got my clogged passage problem fixed, i didn't clean all the carbs however, still have a lot of work to do for a website so I didn't have time. I'm going to be rebuilding them pretty thoroughly once my school check gets here anyway and i won't be riding her very much since I only have to be on campus one day a week (and its a little cold right now).

So after adjusting my air/valve screws to all be the same, I rode her around a bit and she is MUCH more responsive now. I think I'm still a little lean, and I didn't do my spit test to see if my pipes are as hot as they should be, but like I said still have lots of work to do. I should be able to do those tests tomorrow after church.

On another note, I took the plug connector thing off the stator that was too big and swapped it with my melted one on the one that fits, and put my new rectifier in. Everything seems to be working and charging, but I won't know for sure until I get a multi-meter test done on her.

I've also lost another back to one of my pods....Looks like she'll have sock filters until I get my friggin check =(

Still have that long list of stuff to fix, but now she runs almost properly! Yay!
Thanks for all the help guys, I'm almost there!t

 

Got your package today skw, thank you very much! That colortune came right on time, I finally got around to cleaning my carbs today, and I'm going to be ding it again, more thoroughly, tomorrow. Success is within my grasp! XD

 

No problem. PM sent, check it out

 

Ok, so i know I haven't replaced the shim in my 1st exhaust valve, but its not super tight so i figured I'd try out the colortune just for fun. Being a geek, I love tech, and this thing is cool tech! I can't imagine anything easier to tune a carb-style motorcycle. So I did my first three carbs to see if it was going to let me tune them properly or if my pods were going to lean me out too much, and i went from an orange/slightly yellow to a nice blue, but i left a little orange in it just to make sure I'm compensating for the pods, since I don't have a dyno I can't be to sure that doesn't get too lean in high rpms.

When i got to the fourth cylinder, I got a nasty surprise....the cylinder still wasn't firing!

What I'd like to point out here about the colortuner is not only does it let you set your fuel/air mixture very easily, but it also tells you IF your cylinder is firing, and eliminates one of the hardest things to diagnose altogether. ELECTRIC PROBLEMS! I could see spark, which tells me my wire is fine and my coil is fine. So I have one of the three requirements for cylinder firing nailed down off the bat. Spark, fuel, and air.

So I cleaned the carb for that cylinder today, and I thought i did a fairly thorough job....but i guess i'm going to have to check it out again and clean some more.

skw....Thank you again for letting me use that nifty little tool! I would of drove myself nuts trying to figure out whether or not it was a electric problem for a while and wasted a bunch of time, and possibly money.

So tomorrow I'm going to be cleaning the carb again, but this time I'm printing out the more thorough instructions Pete linked me to (thanks Pete!) and take them with me to make sure i don't miss anything.

If there are any other reasons that my cylinder wouldn't be firing, aside from no spark and a plugged pilot jet (it fires on high rpms btw) I'd love to know about it! Thanks for all the help guys!

 

If it's firing at the higher rpms, you see spark but nada at Idle its in the pilot
hmm. Check that bowl, you got a tiny eeny little jet in the bowl itself, use carb cleaner (spray) and see if it shoots out like a water gun.. read the stuff on the link Time (Pete) gave you

 

you pull that mix screw and choke plunger to clean that carb? tiny stuff in ther be careful and DON'T get carb cleaner on any rubber o-ring. It'll get eat up