HELP bike keeps dying on longer rides

From what I gathered he's gone thru the solenoid, cables and the battery itself so either the brushes have burned down or the armature has an open.

 

Finally started disassembling the bike into all of the problem pieces. I had half a tank of gas and with clear tubing reserve was the fastest to drain but it still took close to 45 minutes to drain. Prime and ON both drained but were slower.

 

That is a long time! Your problem may simply be a bad petcock, or clogged screen in the tank.

 

Answers that question, a new or rebuilt petcock from Chacal and you're riding into the sunset.

 

A cap on the petcock vac nip is not a necessity to disable the vacuum operation of the automatic type petcocks.......since you've disabled the vacuum source (at the intake manifold nipple, by removing the vac hose running to the petcock), there is no longer any "(vacuum) signal" to the petcock to turn it on or off (when hooked up as originally designed, the engine vacuum sucks on a diaphram inside the petcock body which pulls open a normally-closed passageway inside the petcock which then allows fuel to flow when the petcock selector lever/handle is set into the ON or RES positions).

So a vac cap on the PETCOCK vac port isn't a "must do", but would certainly be recommended to keep "stuff" from getting in there.......

 

Well I figured I would give you guys an update on my journey. The bike is currently torn down in the garage with all of the known demons excised from the body and sequestered on the work bench or garage floor. Photo #2 is all the problem children I plan to fix and am excited to get those done right.

-Replace gas cap o rings and clean the innards.
-Petcock rebuild so that it works as originally intended.
-Collectors box holes will be welded over.
-Carbs will be inspected and possibly new jets put in depending on what is currently lurking within.
-Chucking the KN filter into the trash and ordering a paper filter.
-Adding RTV ultra red to the half moon sections on the valve cover head to prevent the minor leaking of oil (Anyone know how to get oil out of jeans? lol)
-Go through and fix/replace the starter

And a fun lil bit of luck and terror in photo #3. I had a bolt snap off in the valve head. I was able to eventually extract it after some elbow grease and a left handed drill bit. The bit had snapped apart twice but was still usable after each break. During one of those I was unable to find a small section and hoped and prayed it flew somewhere in the garage and not the bike. Well after taking off the valve cover to recheck clearances and fix the gasket my eye caught a golden twinkle too bright to be just light reflecting on oil. Grabbed my wife’s tweezers and pulled that little guy from the corner. Thankful I found it now and not after a he bike had been ridden for hundreds of miles!

 

Yeah there's a wonderful product from ZEP that's called 505 degreaser in a yellow gallon jug for about $10 at ACE Hardware. Spray it on full strength to the oil stains and allow it to soak for at least 6 hours and wash with HOT-HOT-HOT water I mean coffee hot. This stuff also works great on engine grease/oil not to mention concrete garage floors & driveways. Another is ZEP Industrial Purple Degreaser that is basically the base cleaning solution of the old Formula 409 and will take most anything out but do be aware this stuff is very tough on skin so do wear PPE. I use this to clean the shop rags in an antique Maytag washer, scalding hot water and a 5-gallon bucket of rags followed by a quart of the Purple stuff and leave it run for the afternoon and they come out just as clean as Cintas.

Now don't kid yourself into thinking all the demons have been excised... they multiply like jack-rabbits and become harder to stomp with each successive generation. The only way to truly kill them all is to love them a little and look at this as an adventure. Now you can use some RTV for the half-moons or completly clean out the grooves & channels and go with the correct cover gasket using a little and I mean little bit of Hi-Tack sealer to hold everything in place. I'm using no RTV or any other sealer on my top cover gasket and have no issues with weep or leaking at the half-moons or any other place for that matter. I'm not saying it's a perfect world but they were never intended to used RTV in the first place. Every time I've used a sealer it's always weeped a little right at those locations. To keep the gasket in place while installing the top cover I used a little Scotch tape to hold it up and wet the rubber with a little oil where the tape went across so it didn't stick to the gasket then before torquing pulled all the tape out so the gasket was true on the surface then worked the bolts from the inside out in a criss-cross pattern using new grommets. This was done after I drilled, tapped and heli-coiled all my top cover holes including the internal ones doubling up the coils inside to make a full length thread. I know it's frustrating BUT the fact they have the wear & tear on them tells me the previous owner did something under the cover... take that as you may. The PO of my bike did shim & set the valves as req'd but instead of replacing the OE shims as needed used what appears to be a surface grinder on the back sides to set the clearances, not the best in my book but shims are cheaper than valves.

Don't can the K&N filter just yet. Reason being it may not be the detriment that everyone believes them to be. I'm still working on the 6000 sag with my SECA 750 and will be adding a wideband O2 sensor and mixture meter to get a better sense of what's going on in this transition period. Some have problems with going lean, I've seen it go rich during my tests and actually stuffed a camera into my airbox to observe what the slides are doing in realtime going across the RPM's. They're posted on YouTube under my member name here so maybe check them out.

Anyway enuff for the moment.

 

You've "seen them going rich"? How then, would be a good trick if you could do that..
Maybe you're assuming slides lifting is giving you richer mixture? Never assume, ever...

 

That's easy if you have something to check AFR with

 

The plugs tell all

 

Well I opened it up and this is what it looks like. Not sure how it was supposed to work with it being offset?

 

Yep def can see why this isn’t working…

 

That IS the way that the selector lever is supposed to be..........the 1/4-circle recess allows / directs the fuel flow between 2 adjacent holes (passageways) in the petcock body; 1 of the 2 holes is always the "fuel in from tank" and the other hole that is "connected" by the 1/4-circle recess is either the ON or RES(erve) selector lever position. The straight slot is when the lever is in the PR(ime) position, and it bypasses everything and directs fuel directly from the tank input internal passage to the outlet passage.

It's hard to tell from the first picture but it seems as those the rubber "distribution valve" (the rubber disc thing with 5 holes in it) seems to be deformed?

And I think it's safe to say that starter motor need a full rebuild or replacement.

 

That starter has seen better days that's for sure. I'd look for a replacement as it appears the armature has been cooked.

 

Oh was honestly expecting to see the lever to have been dremmled like I had seen on these forums to bypass the vacuum. Was not expecting the distribution valve to simply be offset… everything else was looking fine, excited to give it a deep clean.

 

I was probably going to try to rebuild it first with a kit from @chacal. I just am trying to strip down all of these problem bits and order everything in a big order hopefully

 

The commutator has been overheated and most likely the adhesive holding the copper bars is compromised, one of the bars on the bottom of pic #2 appears to be standing out further than the others.

 

I will give it a brushing off and upload some pics after work today, thanks for pointing it out

 

Oh boy, this isn’t fixable is it?

 

Sorry no it is not, I knew something was up when I saw the one bar standing proud and the discolored insulation. Yeah time for another starter from Chacal.