Winter Project: Getting my motorcycle operational again

[Encore 280]

Could that elbow pipe be the float bowl drain? Can that hex head plug be turned either direction? If the elbow pipe had a bulbed end then I would say a fuel line would attach.

[luvmystang67]

Sometimes there are drains that COULD have hoses attached... but that are not required.  You might want to drain your carb bowl for winter storage, and without a hose on it, it'd just run onto you engine (which isn't really a problem).  It may not have had a drain tube attached...ever.  I wouldn't worry too much about it, unless it starts spitting gasoline or you have an extra line somewhere.

On the throttle, there's usually a spring inside the throttle body (in the carb).  Are you forgetting that spring?  That is typically what drives the return of the throttle.  If that is installed and still not returning your throttle, you have corrosion or a jam somewhere.  If it did work before you took it apart, and now it doesn't, you've missed something in the carb.  There's not really a setting for this.  You COULD have some corrosion in the throttle line, but I kinda doubt it if its been stored inside.  My guess is you've missed the spring, or have installed something 180 degrees in the throttle body.  Check these things.  There is no spring in the throttle handle itself, its all throttle body.

[TommyH]

Sometimes there are drains that COULD have hoses attached... but that are not required.  You might want to drain your carb bowl for winter storage, and without a hose on it, it'd just run onto you engine (which isn't really a problem).  It may not have had a drain tube attached...ever.  I wouldn't worry too much about it, unless it starts spitting gasoline or you have an extra line somewhere.

On the throttle, there's usually a spring inside the throttle body (in the carb).  Are you forgetting that spring?  That is typically what drives the return of the throttle.  If that is installed and still not returning your throttle, you have corrosion or a jam somewhere.  If it did work before you took it apart, and now it doesn't, you've missed something in the carb.  There's not really a setting for this.  You COULD have some corrosion in the throttle line, but I kinda doubt it if its been stored inside.  My guess is you've missed the spring, or have installed something 180 degrees in the throttle body.  Check these things.  There is no spring in the throttle handle itself, its all throttle body.

  also, you said you re-routed cable’s, make sure there is not to sharp of a bend in the cable, could be causing to much resistance for the spring to function correctly...

[Rob]

Replies:
- Fuel bowl drain makes total sense.  I am betting that is what the little elbow pipe is - especially since it is at the lowest point on the carb.   Thanks!
- I did not remove anything on the handlebars
- I did not have any left over springs...  I was very deliberate to put all the parts together as I removed them so I am not thinking I forgot a spring...  I will explore this as a last resort though. 
- I did not re-route the throttle cables, the routing I did was for the electrical wire harness coming out of the carb, and I routed it back to the same way it was set before
- I need to retract what I said earlier - I don't actually recall checking the throttle on the handlebar before I took the carb off so this could have been pre-existing.  Some corrosion inside the cable could be the cause - but as noted it has never spent a night outside since I parked it so that would be odd.  I will lube everything up and check again.

It will be Friday or Saturday before I can dig in again.  I did get my new air filter so that can go on now.  I think however I will wait to see if I can get it to start before I put that back on as it will make troubleshooting things easier with it off.

[Rob]

On the photos, the red cable is the one that moves when I increase the throttle, and the teal one moves when I manually reduce the throttle.  It has a tiny bit of slack in it when the throttle is at it's lowest point.

[Rob]

OK - the throttle issue may be in the handle as suggested.

I had a lull at work so I took another look at it.  there was some heavier grease/grime near the handle so I blew some carb cleaner in there and hit it with some compressed air.  It now returns 95% of the way back to low throttle on its own.  It takes about 1 second to go from full to minimum on its own which still seems slow.  I blew some kroil in there to see if that would help.  I will let that sit for a while and see what happens.

[Rob]

Spent a few hours on the bike today.  Was a good day.

I decided to put the tank back on, and install the new battery and see what happened.

Tank install was straight forward and the battery went in fine.  I turned the key to on and nothing happened.  At all.  No dash lights and no headlights and nothing happened when i hit the starter.  I figured I had a wiring problem somewhere and was a bit frusterated as i really dont know how to even start on diagnosing that.  I put some tools away and decided to read the manual and see if there was a kill switch somewhere I did not know about.  As I read thru it I thought I should really check the fuses...  I checked every fuse and sure enough the main 30 amp fuse was fried.  I replaced it and the dash lights came right on!  I hit the starter and it turned over fine.  After a few short tries the engine came to life.  I am positive the fuse was the problem I had 5 or 6 years ago when I tried it.  I was in the middle of moving so I did not have time to diagnose it.

Regardless I am glad I cleaned the carb and drained that fuel- it needed it and I learned a lot in the process.

Next I removed the tank again and put the air filter assembly back on.  I noticed when I was done that the throttle cables were no longer going back to idle.  Grrrrr.  I looked close at it and I was finally able to see what the problem was.  As I tightened the clamp holding the airfilter to the carb, the clamp screw was pressing into the throttle cable assembly with just enough pressure to keep it from moving on its own.  I repositioned clamp, re-tightened it and bingo -the throttle now snaps back to idle with authority! 

I have a question to ask about the carb that I will post later.  I also have a problem with the lights that i will post later.  So not out of the woods, but getting close.  (I will be replacing the tires and having someone who knows what they are doing do a once over of the brakes as well.)

[HntnFsh]

That's awesome. Your moving ahead nicely.
I figured it would fire up with minimal effort!

[Rob]

As someone earlier predicted-it was indeed something simple and stupid!  Not complaining though.

Ok, here is my last carb question.  There is a hose connection coming off the side near the top of the carb.  There is no hose to plug into it and I honestly don't think there ever was.  Anyone know what this is for, and If I neglected to reconnect something? 

[Rob]

Here is a shot of it again, just after I peeled off the carb and before I unhooked anything.

And one more of it when the carb was totally off

[Rob]

The headlight issue I mentioned is at least partially solved. 

Issue was that I had no headlights when turning on the ignition.  I found the fuse was burning out everytime they tried to go on.

I now recall this was a pre-existing situation.  I had after market driving lights installed when I got the bike.  They are on the same fuse as the main light.  At some point they started blowing the fuse for an unknown reason.  Not being critical I just left them off figuring I would address them later as time allowed.  15 years have passed and I had totally forgotten about that issue.  So for now I will turn them off and at some point I suppose they need to move to a dedicated inline fuse.

This has been replaced with a new issue - not critical though.  The fuel level indicator is showing empty and the low fuel light flashes 8 times in a row.  It sounds like the Fuel Meter Sending Unit has gone bad (probably due to bad fuel gumming something up).    Looks like a 65 dollar part that is pretty easy to replace.

[Angry Perch]

Lots of progress. Sounds like you're having a good time!

[HntnFsh]

It seams like he was talking about taking his time and easing through. Now that there is good progress the motivation is there to keep plugging away!!

[luvmystang67]

With electrical... ALWAYS check fuses first... and then try to locate ground wires, clean them up, and put them back on.  It is usually 1 of the 2.

With fuses blowing, you can try ramping up the fuse strength to see if that fixes it.  This isn't the MOST sound advice, but if a 10 amp fuse blows and a 15 amp fuse holds... I'm just running the 15 amp.  What you're trying to prevent is a direct short and either will do that. If you ramp up to say double the fuse amperage and they're still blowing, you have an issue with wiring and a short.  It may be a wire that has rubbed through somewhere and is touching the frame... something like that.  Electrical sucks though.  You really need a voltage meter to diagnose electrical, and you just start chasing it from the source, finding out where you have power and where you dont.  Unknown fuses blowing is among the most frustrating (unfortunately).

No idea on the carb, but its fairly normal for there to be hoses to nowhere that are drains, air vents, etc on carbs.  If you're pretty sure it wasn't hooked up, you're probably right.

Brakes are also not difficult once you get in there.  On most bikes getting into the rear hub is kind of a pain.  If they're disc brakes, they're really easy actually.  It baffles me that brake jobs on cars cost so much.

[Rob]

It seams like he was talking about taking his time and easing through. Now that there is good progress the motivation is there to keep plugging away!!

Yeah - It is pretty fun to tinker with this stuff.  It did take me 2-3 weeks to get the carb on and off - some of that was spent waiting for parts.  I took that slow though.  Probably a couple hours to get all the blocking parts removed and the carb off, another 6-8 cleaning and such, then an hour to re-assemble. 

Thanks for the thoughts on the carb.  I am pretty sure it is back the way I pulled it apart, but that one hose has me scratching my head.  Wish I knew what the purpose was.  It did start and run without it though so I am guessing it is just an air input/outflow of some kind.  A buddy suggested it might be there to detect ambient pressure for proper air/fuel mix.  That was as good of a theory as any I had (which is currently none!)

the lights are on a 15 fuse.  I thought about bumping it to 20 just to see what happened.  I think only lights are on that fuse.  Next step would be to look for shorts and such as you suggest.  For now I can just keep them off and still be legal.

I have a neighbor who does a lot of work on cars and bikes.  I may see if he has any ideas on checking the brakes.  But if I am having the tires replaced anyway I may just see if someone can look at them while they are in there.

 Really appreciate all the ideas and such on this forum.  It was quite helpful.  I will keep everyone posted on the updates as I have them.  I am going to be away for a few days so I won't have the ability to look at it for a while though.