Vickersguy

I went to do a check of the right front cylinder plug wire, went to pull it off the plug and found it was sitting on the plug, but not seated. Well over an 1/8 inch off actually touching the connector on the plug. Maybe that had something to do with the failure to warm up like the others, huh ? Sloppy of me, that bit. I'll jump on her for a ride and see if it isn't all better now... It's clear to me new caps and wires would be a good idea anyway. They're probably originals.

Thanks to many contributors and in particular, Cowpuc, I've gotten from torn apart to back together. Another '83 is saved from scrap and ready for the road again. Now, the final part. The right front cylinder takes a bit longer to heat the exhaust flange beyond the touchable temp. The other three heat up quickly. With no tags and no helmet in this helmet state, I haven't gotten to really ride it yet, but zipping up and down the street it seems OK. I might have a slight exhaust leak at the collector but nothing I can see. It takes a full two minutes to run evenly without the choke. It will not rev until this two minutes are up. Then all seems normal with a little less power than I remember, however it's just barely up to operational temps. The carbs are cleaned and synced. Pilot screws are all at two turns out. ( I'm going to give the right front carb another 1/2 turn. ) So my question is... I have the colortune plug. The "Bunsen blue" range seems to be from 1 1/2 turns to 3 1/4 turns on the pilot air screws. This is way too wide for me. I compromised with 2 turns and may go 2 1/2. I have no access to EGA equipment so I'm thinking I'm reduced to checking the plug condition for the proper medium tan color. Any quick ideas on how to chase the pilot air screw to a good setting or am I already there for all intents and purposes...

Solder joints again. Six bad ones. All back together and seems to work. Pressure holding. Now back together. Sat in the captains chair and shook the handlebars. Loose as a goose. Have to tighten those neck bearings. Will this never end ???

I've gone through the Dis-assemble - clean - reassemble - fail - dis-assemble -clean etc. cycle five times. No progress. I have noticed that the vent and front fork solenoids have a snap to them when I decrease pressure and the rear shock solenoid does not. Perhaps I have a voltage drop through poor solder joints in the control panel. There are no obvious or even subtle flaws in the valve body. All the solenoids work on the bench. Guess I'd better check the voltage to them on the bike. It should click when I decrease the rear shock pressure. Well something should and I got nada. Back to the book...

It's quick to inflate, quick to deflate. The front forks hold pressure for several hours, very slowly leaking out. Rear shock deflates in 60 seconds. The reed valve in the valve body is holding, so that leaves the solenoid valve seats. Also the plunger caps. If someone has ever found new caps, I'd love to know the source.

Per Prairie hammer's instructions, I cleaned up the seats in the CLASS valve body. They are fairly clean and square now, the corrosion is gone and the plunger contact area is shiny instead of grey with oxide. The challenge is to fix the rubber cap on the solenoid rod. I'm thinking a thin skin, 1/64th inch thick, of neoprene rubber, or maybe 1/32 , glued on with that rubber cement used for bicycle patches. With the groove that spring pressure and age has left in the plunger surface, being offset from center and all, i doubt it will seal even after what I did to the valve seats. Ideas are welcomed on this or a source for replacement caps. They are 8mm. dia.

Per Prairie hammer's instructions, I cleaned up the seats in the class valve body. They are fairly clean and square now, the corrosion is gone and the plunger contact area is shiny instead of grey with oxide. The challenge is to fix the rubber cap on the solenoid rod

I'm not sure if the de-linking kit involves new braided lines. If it does, I recommend you save the springs on the old lines. Should you replace the gas line from your fuel pump to the carbs, the spring will fit over the new 1/4 inch gas line. It will help prevent folding the fuel line where the hose does that 180 degree bend, as well as armor the soft fuel line. I'm doing exactly that, right now.

Gonna do new brake piston seals while you're doing the brake lines ? Seems a good time to do it. PM me if you are.

Well, I'm not quite sure how to answer the " which ammo will be most accurate " question. Perhaps I could relate an anecdotal story to illustrate the probable answer. I got a Remington 700 SPS in .223, installed a match trigger group, threw away the junk stock and installed the receiver into an Accuracy International chassis with bipod, added an $850 Vortex Viper 8X24 FFP scope and got some walmart ammo and went out to roughly sight it in. It shot 6 inch groups at 75 yards, lol. Went and got the good stuff, Hornady varmint at over twice the price per round and shot a 1/2 inch group without really trying. You absolutely get what you pay for in ammo. Another story is I used to shoot .22lr with my friends. We set up clay pigeons at 209 yards and took turns. You had to pick one, take your shot. Hit or miss it was the next guys turn. When they were all gone, hi score "won". I got tired of loosing with my $75 22 and went and got a CZ 455 and skipped the bulk ammo in a bucket and got Eley Target ammo at $5.75 per 50 rounds. ( The really good Eley Tenex costs $1 per round. A high price for .22lr !!! ) My hit rate went from 35% to over 95%. If you want to play the accuracy game, for real, you cannot skimp on the ammo. If you must get by on the cheap, you're going to have to reload. There is no other option. Another point is that 1:7 twist rates are for heavy bullets. If you try a sub 55 grain bullet with a hot charge, you may explode the bullet with centrifugal force. Those little guys are spinning in excess of 100,000 rpm. There's a lot to accuracy. AR-15 twist rates go from 1:10 to 1:7. Each twist rate is optimal for a bullet weight. The 1:9 is the " middle of the road " barrel. I'm no expert by any means, but the 1:7 barrels should do better with a minimum of 62 grain bullets and should easily stabilize 68 grain fodder. Lightly loaded 55 grain ammo, with low velocity, might not be over stabilized in the 1:7 but it will not provide best accuracy. Cheap Russian ammo is, frankly, junk. Good for making noise but not much else. Believe me when I tell you this: There is no way to get real accuracy out of cheap ammo. There is nothing you can do to your gun, no trick part you can buy, that will make cheap ammo shoot well. It's garbage in, garbage out. There are AR-15's out there that will deliver nice quarter size groups at 100 yards every single time. They ain't shootin Tula and that's a fact. Don't misunderstand me. I love a big pile of hot brass. There's nothing like roaring through a belt of ammo at a shoot. Quantity has a quality all it's own they say. It is fun in a different sort of way. The green box Remington probably will be most accurate. It has my vote.

Yes I did but I didn't take a pic. It took a moment to figure out how to tie it off because the ties must be attached to the inst. pod and not other stuff. Used a glue on wire tie base to anchor the tie.

Okee Dokee, Here we are. The problems are fixed. The new solder station showed up and the cold solder joints are redone. I'm not one who will hide bad choices. I was wrong on all counts about the RLU. My readings were same/same on my two RLUs. Because they are both good. I say "problems" because several things changed after I re-installed the CMS after the re-solder job. I now have a level reading on the gas gauge which I didn't have before and all the warning LCD's have gone out but the oil pressure, which should be on when the bike is not running and the battery, which should also be on when the stator isn't charging. Good stuff. So the dim headlight issue, if you have it, is, in all probability, bad solder joints inside the CMS. Off to the next issue.

Yes Yes and Yes ! The cap blew in this afternoon and there wasn't even any ice on it. It is awesome ! It's even more awesome because it's the first part on the bike with a story, which makes it better than a new cap even ! My cap on the left and Tweeksis's donation proudly mounted on the right ! Thank you so much Puc. Let me show you > I also have found new ways to occupy myself till the soldering station arrives so I can fix the CMU. I've been modifying the plastic mounts for the studs in the instrument pod. Very cool huh ? I guess it's time to play with the epoxy again....

I figured it might be a good idea to check those solder joints while I wait for the new RLU to show up in the mail. I mean, how hard can it be, couple nuts, a plug or two, badda bing. There you are... Well, it didn't go like it does in the movies. One of the nuts on the instrument housing mounting posts wouldn't break free. The nuts were really tight. So I put some stress on it and heard that crunch sound where the stud broke free of the housing and started spinning freely, the nut still tight on the stud. So I reach in with some slip joint pliers and put some stress on the embossment the stud is anchored in. It keeps spinning, so I grab tighter. The plastic around the stud starts breaking up and the stud is still spinning. Finally enough plastic broke away that I could grab the stud with the pliers and the nut finally broke loose. What a mess. I mean, I can fix it back up with epoxy and fiberglass but it's such a pain when things go that way. I have 8 or 9 cold solder joints. They are bad enough I can see them with a magnifying glass. Now I get to wait for the new soldering pencil to show up in the mail too. On the bright side, except for those bad solder joints, everything is remarkably good condition. All the connections and plugs are shiny and oxidation free. So it goes....

Just a thought, as the replacement RLU wanders slowly across the country. Now that I've got it out and on the bench, I think I'm going to take some resistance/continuity readings off this RLU, then the same readings off the next one, when it finally shows up and compare the results. It might be that I could shed some light on the RLU mysteries or at least give some readings someone else might use in future. That good/bad comparison could prove helpful to someone. Or not. It remains to be seen.

Oh yeah, that sounds awesome! I'm wondering if the E-6000 is the same or similar to the Yamabond 5 that I already have. That stuff is tough and sticks well too. It's thin enough so it doesn't clog up the ridge on the inside of the cap, compromising the purchase the cap has on the ridge on the anti dive body. Either way, it's better than a piece of rubber tube to camouflage the adjusting screw area. I'm totally up for this. I'll PM you shortly. Thank you so much !

Yessir Mr. Cowpuc sir ! Yep ! Just the one ! Though it's really hot here, 29F at the moment, I won't have a good man going out into sub zero temps for such a thing. Wait for a heat wave, at least 30F, before rushing out to your tent barn. It is a great comfort to know the bike will wobble straight when it's done now. I'm beginning to think I'm the only one that doesn't have one or two Mk1's put back for parts.

Hey Cowpuc, Just a comment, I have really enjoyed you vids and posts and I thank you for the information you have shared. Yes, that would be me looking for that silly rubber cap. Just so you know, you haven't lost it yet. I know it's silly, but it triggers my sense of aesthetics. I got the black vinyl covered braided lines just to keep the color " right " on the front end. Can't have the black cap on one side and not the other. Sadly my quest continues. I have found one, but I have to buy the whole bike. Seems a bit extreme just to get one plastic cap but I am considering it. If the bike was an '83 blond, I would in a heart beat. It's not... There is an '83 getting parted out in W.V.. I may call the guy... So far, no luck on the cap.

It's the reserve lighting unit that is bad. Here's the reasons I made that call. #1 ) The headlight indicator in the dash was lit. That is independent of all the other circuits being looked at. It's voltage source comes from the RLU and returns to the RLU. I know I have good grounds and I know my H-4 bulb is good, yet the light is on. That's a point against the RLU #2 ) When I jumper out the whole shebang, I get proper operation of the system, but the low beam will not work. Everything works fine except I have no low beam power. Again, another point against the RLU. #3 ) I put the battery charger on to make up for any low voltage conditions that might compromise the operation of the system. That bumped up the system voltage well above any failure mode that might have been caused by a low voltage condition. There was no improvement in system function. #4 ) A tested used RLU was available on e-bay for $5.60, including shipping. #5 ) My cheap chinese soldering pencil for soldering up the "computer" is burned up and no good and bad and don't work and awful. #6 ) Diodes are frequently used as switches in inexpensive logic circuits. They are reliable and can handle a fair amount of current. A bad diode, in a diode switch logic circuit, would give the kind of symptoms I'm looking at. Those symptoms would be low voltage on both hi and lo beams, ( current flowing through a resistance in reverse through a bad diode ) Also an open diode would cause the headlamp light to go on and I would have no power to the lo beam. These are typical failure modes of diode logic circuits. The scary thing is that they are very reliable. What will take out a diode is an over voltage condition, possibly caused by a bad voltage regulator, possibly damaged by too high a load on the system, which would have symptoms like the burned up alternator plug I just removed...... I think I need to stop thinking about this for a day or so. I'm gonna loose my Zen.

I'm still cleaning connectors and switches. It does get boring and gives me time to think. Thoughts like, " What if I skipped cleaning all this stuff and just jumpered a hot wire from the battery directly to the blue/black wire on the dimmer switch ?" I got two answers that shed some light on the situation when I did this. #1 . The white headlight dash lamp went out. That let me know that I'm not wasting my time cleaning connectors and switches. The headlight dash lamp going out let me know that the delta V. between battery voltage and whatever voltage is getting to the RLU and the "computer" is important to how the system works. The #2 observation was that the headlight low beam went out completely. No more dim orange 4.8 volt glow. When switched to high beam, it was very bright. I didn't check to see if there was power to both high and low beam elements at the same time, but disconnecting the jumper wire did change the output light level. It got less bright. I do know that when the High beam is on, without the jumper connected, there is power to both low and high beam at the headlight plug. Also the headlamp symbol on the LCD never went off. I don't know what that all means, but I'm glad I tried the experiment. Overall it's still annoying. It reminds me of the thermos bottle joke. It keeps hot stuff hot and cold stuff cold, but how does it know? Whatever... I'm back to cleaning connectors and switches.....I'll get some voltage readings when I'm done.

Well, the data is in and it's inconclusive. I spent several hours tracing the path through the XVZ12TDK diagram which seems to have the correct wire colors that exactly match the wires on my bike. The easy part is from the battery, thru the main switch, back to the fuse box, then to the start switch, then the reserve light unit. All that was easy. I am loosing 1.4 volts through that run. The worst offender is the kill switch but the key switch is not far behind. I will clean the kill switch anyway. There is a forum post on that, which I downloaded. It gets complicated at the RLU. The dim switch is not directly connected to the headlight. One output from the RLU goes to the dim switch, then goes to the computer on the hi/lo wires. Another output output from the RLU also goes to both the computer AND the H-4 bulb. I suspect the original design uses diodes for switches in this system. RLU's go for short $ on e-bay. I am opposed to just buying stuff helter-skelter to fix problems but I have no clear direction to go from here. On low beam, I've got 4.8 volts to the lo beam and nothing to the hi beam. On hi beam, I have full voltage to both hi and lo beams. This makes no sense to me at all. On lo beam, the white headlamp light on the dash is illuminated. When I switch to hi beam, the blue hi beam indicator goes on and the white headlamp indicator goes out. The fix seems to be this : #1 ) clean the kill switch contacts to reduce the resistance in the circuit. #2 ) get a used RLU from e-bay, and #3 ) plan on soldering the computer following the forum post instructions ( I'll have to locate those again ). The early Mk1 board is somewhat different from the later Mk2 board, I understand. Never the less, I've discovered no clue that would tell me it's the computer board or that it's the RLU. If there is a test I could do that would solve this I'm all ears.

After reading the dim headlight posts, because it's rude to make a post on questions already answered, my headlight issue on my '83 is similar, but different. It's also weird. The classic trouble shooting path is to check the Hi/Lo switch, which I've done. The switch is good, but I'm not getting battery voltage at the switch. I have 12.8 volts at the battery but only 10.07 volts at the blue wire supplying power to the switch. At the H-4 plug to the bulb, I have 11.7 volts to the low beam, ( the same voltage if I use a frame ground or the neg. batt. post, so no ground issue...) and 4 volts to the high beam. I figure 4 volts is the "trace" voltage the RLU uses to check the condition of the filament of the high beam. When I switch to high beam, I have 11.7 volts to both hi and lo plug sockets. I think this means the RLU is working properly. If the headlight is plugged into it's socket, I get the panel headlight white lamp lit on Lo and it goes out on Hi. If the headlight is not plugged in, the white panel lamp is lit all the time. I'm beginning to think the next step is doing the solder joints in the dash panel. However, one guy with an issue exactly the same as mine, did the solder job and it made no difference. It ended up he had a bad bulb and I do not. The H-4 bulb is totally good. I have a 2 volt loss between the battery and the headlight switch and that power goes through the dash panel. It also seems clear that the dim switch only controls where the CMU sends the power, to the Hi or the Lo on the headlight. So it's the CMU, right ? and the solder joints... I'm going to pull and return all the relays behind the headlight just to be sure there are good contacts there. Just not sure where to go from here... OH, forgot to mention, my self canceling unit does not work. I don't think that affects the headlight though.

Geezum, now I've got oil anxiety. As wailmart is the closest, I guess I'll pick up the Mercury Marine Quicksilver 20/50

Well I've been looking for two months. Everywhere. E-bay, Craigslist etc. It seems that the only way to get one of these obscure caps is to buy a complete rolling chassis. $300 seems a little steep for this silly little plastic cap. As I'm older and unlikely to ever need enough parts to justify buying a complete spare bike, not to mention I really have nowhere to put the fool thing, I have been reduced to begging. Anyone with a Mk1, First Gen bike, who would part with this cap is urged to contact me. Please.

I retired two years ago, built a new house and parked my sailboat in the local marina, one mile from my driveway. Ahhh, I finally got to paradise !!! It never occurred to me that our "new" home would need so much work. I thought it would be just a few boat projects time-to-time. It is ! Plus the home repairs, need a new tile floor in the kitchen because the contractor screwed it up, plus landscapeing because my wife needs help with all the new shrubs and such, constant lawn care and so forth. Plus the marina got damaged in the latest hurricane and I got a job putting that back together as project manager. Then I decided to restore a 35 year old Yamaha Venture Royale and repair some Kenwood Ham Radios. I hope to find a doctor who will prescribe bedrest soon. This retirement is gonna kill me !