saddlebum Posted August 14 Share #26 Posted August 14 (edited) 21 hours ago, RDawson said: Just polish it up real nice, stick an HD sticker on it and trailer it around while sitting in an air conditioned truck. 🤣🤣🤣 There is a strict stipulation to this solution -----Bike must leak oil and shake at idle like a belly dancer. Edited August 14 by saddlebum Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marcarl Posted August 14 Share #27 Posted August 14 2 hours ago, saddlebum said: Trust me I can relate. Dutch blood does run in my veins. You did say 'run' didn't you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vickersguy Posted August 15 Author Share #28 Posted August 15 Before we all get carried away with social commentary and what not, no matter the entertainment value, I am reminded that this is a TECH forum. In the interest of full disclosure I must also note for the record, that I am struggling with carburetor issues as well as the spark issue. The correct vinyl tube has been delivered by the little brown truck of joy, along with the windshield washer repair hose barbs. I made a template that bolts to the carb diaphragm cover with marks to indicate the correct fuel level in the float bowel. I immediately discovered the right rear carb drain hose used to check the float level is damaged and gas poured all over the motor from the hose when I cracked the drain screw open. The right rear carb float appears to be stuck and the carb is flooded. Front two are fine. They gotta come out AGAIN. So right now I will share what little I have discovered from about 6 hours chasing TCI repair across a dozen forums. The blue and white spherical diodes ( 8 ) I was so happy with, may be bad even though they look OK. They should be changed out regardless of how they look. The round cylindrical capacitors, ( 17 ) which are now 40 years old, should be changed out. They are well past their life expectancy even if they look OK. I'm not very happy about that because there are so many. Doing most of the solder joints is not enough. You really have to re-solder them all to be sure. Changing out the 4 big transistors in the heat sinks is a good idea. From what I can find, if you do these 4 things, change out the blue/white diodes, change out the big transistors, replace the "barrel" type capacitors, and re-solder the solder joints, about 80% of the TCI boxes come back on-line. This is do-able. Carbs first. I will come back to this after the float issue is corrected. I found a better pic of damaged blue/white diodes. I also enlarged a pic of the xylol/acetone mix applied to the goo. You can see it wrinkling up the goo under the green capacitor. When it looks like that, it can easily be removed with a toothpick. Any remaining goo can then be wiped away with a q-tip. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vickersguy Posted August 23 Author Share #29 Posted August 23 Note to SELF... A properly tightened main jet looks exactly the same as one gently finger tight, that unscrews and falls to the bottom of the float bowl to jam the float. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marcarl Posted August 24 Share #30 Posted August 24 How much research did it take to figure that one out? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saddlebum Posted August 24 Share #31 Posted August 24 3 hours ago, Marcarl said: How much research did it take to figure that one out Probably required an ohmmeter to check resistance through the port. High ohms reading jet in place. Low ohms reading jet missing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vickersguy Posted August 25 Author Share #32 Posted August 25 Ahh... it was #4 carb and I noticed when the bike started pulling towards the right... As this is a TECH forum, I thought I might share a special electrical trick I discovered... If you have no room left in your breaker panel in your garage or if you are sad because your air compressor or welder keeps tripping the breaker, here's how to fix it at almost no cost what so ever !!!! TA DA !!! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vickersguy Posted August 25 Author Share #33 Posted August 25 (edited) To defend myself, only slightly, three years ago before I abandoned the bike in the back of the garage I used a color-tune to set the pilot screws. I had some confusion because I could get a blue color across a wide range of turns on the pilot screws, roughly 2 to 4 turns. I guessed roughly three turns, more or less, and had inconclusive results. Honestly, I don't remember going back and fine tuning the pilot screws afterwards. I lost my notes as to where I set them and in the process of redoing the valves and prepping the bike for use, and trying to sort out multiple issues, the pilot screws were overlooked. Their mal-adjustment came back with a bang when I first took the bike out last week. You cannot troubleshoot a bad ignition system if your carbs foul two cylinders in only 12 miles. Tomorrow I will check to see if the adjustments I made tonight have helped. The reason I put the bike up is that not only did it run poorly but the top end was making weird screechy sounds. Really loud and it sounded like something was really off. When I checked the valves this year, the valves were just like I set them and I was looking at the manual checking the conversion from mm to inches, when I spotted that the exhaust valve clearances in the manual were tighter than the intake valves. Really ? Sound right to you ? I will point out again as I did in another thread, THE VALVE CLEARANCES IN THE '83 YAMAHA FACTORY MANUAL ARE IN FACT REVERSED. Anyway, when you are going through a troubleshooting process you must eliminate variables. Messing with multiple widgets at once just muddies the water. The bike runs like garbage. The only sane thing to do is to go back to the beginning and do the check list from square one. Don't skip steps or jump to conclusions. I would go on about adjusting carbs but there must be 100 threads here about adjusting carbs and it would be totally redundant. In the meanwhile I will discuss my deep wisdom on the subject of bleeding brake systems.... Edited August 25 by Vickersguy increase sarcasm levels and add snark ( spelling ) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saddlebum Posted August 25 Share #34 Posted August 25 18 hours ago, Vickersguy said: Ahh... it was #4 carb and I noticed when the bike started pulling towards the right... As this is a TECH forum, I thought I might share a special electrical trick I discovered... If you have no room left in your breaker panel in your garage or if you are sad because your air compressor or welder keeps tripping the breaker, here's how to fix it at almost no cost what so ever !!!! TA DA !!! Ironically I rewired a house that actually makes that look safe in comparison. The owner used every thing from several strands of bell wire twisted together to 000 gauge welding cable. On top of that he joined them together in sardine cans which he used as junction boxes. How he never burned the house down is beyond me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vickersguy Posted September 14 Author Share #35 Posted September 14 So the bike runs like garbage. Marcal feels it's the carbs and I agree with him. The spark still sucks, however. In Post #28 back up the page I posted a picture of some bad blue/white diodes that were badly degraded next to my beautiful as-new looking diodes. I read in a virago post on another board that even the good looking ones can be bad. I picked the easiest diode to pull for a check and wadya know ! I had hoped they were good because they looked good. I'm going to change them all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vickersguy Posted September 15 Author Share #36 Posted September 15 Also, re-soldering the board will be done thoroughly. To quote the Virago guys... Galvanic Corrosion The space between unsealed connectors contains oil, moisture, fingerprints, dirt, ...etc. Also, being open to the world's contaminates, these things can seep and leach into the micro voids between the connector surfaces. Enter "Galvanic corrosion", where ionic interchange between disimilar metals acts like a corrosive battery, producing compounds that can interfere with good current flow, even making it act like a semiconductor diode. A good place for dielectric grease. Inter metallic corrosion Many brass and copper connectors are tin plated, and the fine border between those two dissimilar metals is closed to the outside elements. However, a strange long-term migration and intermixing of those metals occurs in that thin layer, leading to a form of inter metallic corrosion, which can also interfere with good current flow. Same can occur at the boundary of a substrate and a layer of solder, which can include boundary cracking of the solder. These types of degradation take many years to form, not an issue within normal life expectancy of typical vehicles. But, becomes real after 30 years or more. We studied this back in the 80's, as part of determining the MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) of various electronics products. These pictures represent similar biopsy-like micro cross-sections of tin plated copper-clad printed circuit boards. What all this means, is that with the age of our bikes, electrical problems can occur which defy normal diagnostic expectations. For example, you could have a failed wire connector which still shows appropriate voltage, but won't deliver current to a device, like a light bulb. This was my experience three years ago with a failed turn signal bulb. The contact at the bulb base showed voltage, but the bulb wouldn't light up. Maddening. Traced it to inter metallic corrosion within the contact face. Cleaned up the face and re-tinned it, works fine... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vickersguy Posted yesterday at 03:30 AM Author Share #37 Posted yesterday at 03:30 AM Changed out the diodes, good news is I didn't kill the box. Bad news, it's no better... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marcarl Posted yesterday at 12:32 PM Share #38 Posted yesterday at 12:32 PM 9 hours ago, Vickersguy said: Changed out the diodes, good news is I didn't kill the box. Bad news, it's no better... What type of ignition leads did you use? Should be the wire type, not carbon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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