JSHRAM
.060 Over
Well, the chicken has come home to roost...
I bought my bike hardly used. It sat at the original owener's garage for years without being ridden. Thought I was getting a steal deal (and I did). Got the bike home and found it not running clean.. hmmm... just needs to be run-out! In the meantime i added pipes and stripped the air intake and smog stuff only to have the problems get worse... fiddled with mapping a zillion times, got tons of great advice and rode it after getting to run "decent" though not yet perfect.
Last 60 miles into a 500 mile ride she barely drove.... stripped her down and found the fuel pump gummed up and the injectors spitting out 13% of their designed output. I was running super-super lean. Cleaned and replaced everything that was damaged from the Ethanol monster (never let that crap sit in one of your toys) and rode it like I was on cloud 9.. she sang!
last week I was riding to Vegas just cruising along at 80 and clearly lost a cylinder... turns out I ate a valve. pulled the valve cover today and found the bent exhaust valve on #3 and a seriously gouged plug. Looks to me like a piece of a ring, or the edge of the piston let go and bounced around, got caught in the valve then the piston whacked it... my days or running lean come home to roost. Not such a good deal any more.
So, I will start putting parts away on the shelf and wait for the time where I can yank the motor, pull the head for the rebuild and probable porting and split the case to replace the pistons with HC pistons. Not exactly how I wanted to spend my summer... oh well, at least it's paid for.
Sadness in Vegas...
John
PS - the following week I was driving home in Vegas on my reliable old steed, my 1997 Ninja ZX-11 and she just quit on me. Seems an electrical short on one of the safety switches went forcing me mto the side of the freeway (second time in two weeks mind you). yup, called AAA again... can't believe I'm doing this... the guys comes, knows his stuff and I push the bike up to his roller dolly he's assembling to pull the bike on the flat-bed and put the kick-stand down and when I put the bike over, the kick-stand follds up on me and the bike comes down on my leg, pinning me under it with my head in the freeway and a 18 wheeler barely misses my head by a couple feet... not to mention the new scratches all over the lower cowling and the bent shift lever... darn.. darn-darn-darn.... AAA guy pulls bike off me, we get it loaded and take the dead girl home.
So, my Connis is in the middle of a valve adjust (HUGE job on a Connie 14), Triump is dead and trusty Ninja is dead.. I own three bikes and not one of them runs...
Is this a sign from God?
Sigh...
I bought my bike hardly used. It sat at the original owener's garage for years without being ridden. Thought I was getting a steal deal (and I did). Got the bike home and found it not running clean.. hmmm... just needs to be run-out! In the meantime i added pipes and stripped the air intake and smog stuff only to have the problems get worse... fiddled with mapping a zillion times, got tons of great advice and rode it after getting to run "decent" though not yet perfect.
Last 60 miles into a 500 mile ride she barely drove.... stripped her down and found the fuel pump gummed up and the injectors spitting out 13% of their designed output. I was running super-super lean. Cleaned and replaced everything that was damaged from the Ethanol monster (never let that crap sit in one of your toys) and rode it like I was on cloud 9.. she sang!
last week I was riding to Vegas just cruising along at 80 and clearly lost a cylinder... turns out I ate a valve. pulled the valve cover today and found the bent exhaust valve on #3 and a seriously gouged plug. Looks to me like a piece of a ring, or the edge of the piston let go and bounced around, got caught in the valve then the piston whacked it... my days or running lean come home to roost. Not such a good deal any more.
So, I will start putting parts away on the shelf and wait for the time where I can yank the motor, pull the head for the rebuild and probable porting and split the case to replace the pistons with HC pistons. Not exactly how I wanted to spend my summer... oh well, at least it's paid for.
Sadness in Vegas...
John
PS - the following week I was driving home in Vegas on my reliable old steed, my 1997 Ninja ZX-11 and she just quit on me. Seems an electrical short on one of the safety switches went forcing me mto the side of the freeway (second time in two weeks mind you). yup, called AAA again... can't believe I'm doing this... the guys comes, knows his stuff and I push the bike up to his roller dolly he's assembling to pull the bike on the flat-bed and put the kick-stand down and when I put the bike over, the kick-stand follds up on me and the bike comes down on my leg, pinning me under it with my head in the freeway and a 18 wheeler barely misses my head by a couple feet... not to mention the new scratches all over the lower cowling and the bent shift lever... darn.. darn-darn-darn.... AAA guy pulls bike off me, we get it loaded and take the dead girl home.
So, my Connis is in the middle of a valve adjust (HUGE job on a Connie 14), Triump is dead and trusty Ninja is dead.. I own three bikes and not one of them runs...
Is this a sign from God?
Sigh...
