Help with diagnosis

No idea, that is something i plan on tackling in the winter when i garage it at my parents house. Right now all the work is done on the street and i was too concerned with something falling into the motor. call me paranoid but i dont want to risk it.

However i got great news. I got the bike fixed. Carbs vacuum sync (all level), color tuned, and no more high revs.

The one thing the bike is still doing and i am not sure why is a slight hesitant coming out of first gear. I put a new clutch cable on and i will be adjusting it during the week using this as a guide

 

there's a perfect example of why you shouldn't believe everything you see on youtube

 

Park the bike until you check your valve clearances. They have probably never been checked and a burnt valve is in your future if any of the exhaust valves are out of spec.

 

In an ideal world i would be able to do the valve shims next week but its hard to do them when you live in Brooklyn and use the street as your garage.

 

So then just to make sure that you totally understand-----once you do your valve shim clearance check and most likely change some of them, you will need to do the syncing and colortuning all over again. But hey....look on the bright side---now you have the experience of doing it already.

Dave Fox

 

I use the street as my garage, and I still manage. Plastic bags and packing tape to cover over open and exposed components. So far I have had my carbs out twice, both wheels off of the bike for extended periods (not at the same time), and even retapped and installed an insert into a sparkplug hole. That was a fun project that required 3 extension cords to get the shop-vac out to the bike to suck the metal that ended up in the cylinder.

My 3 year old neighbor came out to question what was going on.
"Mr. MBFTY, what are you doing?"
"I'm vacuuming my motorcycle, Jaylon."
"How come you have to vacuum your motorcycle?"

Kids are great. So are properly adjusted valves. Check them, garage or not.

 

Yeah, sometimes kids have to have the clearance in their heads adjusted too......

 

I've done that plenty... Carbs 3 times, rear brakes, front brakes, rebuilt caliper, new MC, and 2 oil changes. I want to give my neighbors a slight break, I have been working on the bike for the past 3 weeks on and off . Anyway what are the symptoms of needing to replace the shims and what would cause hesitation out of first gear? bad clutch plates?

I am using castoil 20/50. would that cause the issue with the clutch plates?

 

How many miles on the motor?

My first suspect is improperly adjusted clutch cable. My second suspect is worn internal trans parts.

Symptoms of needing to adjust valves include, but arent limited to, poor performance, valvetrain noise, hard starting or not wanting to idle, or even not idling without choke. If you do not have previous service records to show the valves were serviced, assume they werent. This is one thing that like EVERY fairweather motorcyclist doesnt do. Its somewhat expensive and they wont worry about it. Just change the oil and go. The 80's was an era of tons of fairweather motorcyclists. If you dont have records, then it wasnt done.

In my camp, we only use motorcycle specific oils. Ill go and tell it from the highest peaks that you should only do so as well. Others will argue otherwise. Your own personal mileage may vary. I will say the oil has something to do with the shifting issue. But, as I said... your personal mileage may vary.

 

bike has 12k+ miles. No idea what was done and wasn't. The oil i use is motorcycle oil see image below. I hope it is the clutch. Sometimes when shifting from second to first it wont engage and grinds a bit or it wont engage first gear and slides into neutral.

 

You're using the correct oil. Your clutch could probably stand adjusting; and/or the cable needs to be lubed or maybe even replaced.

At 12K if your valve clearances have been ignored, you're approaching the "danger zone" for a burnt valve. The initial check was to have been done at 3K with subsequent checks every 5K thereafter. The valve clearances tighten, not loosen, and if ignored you will eventually burn a valve. Simply CHECKING them can easily be done no matter where you're working on the bike. We've got a weeks' worth of nice weather coming; don't keep riding the bike and putting it off.