92 Venture, It's alive

[stevej]

After 5 months of on again off again tinkering, my 92 finally runs, not well, but it runs.

 

Got the bike from an estate, as a basket case, last year and actually began work on the bike last July after I found a good drive shaft and differential. It had been torn apart in 2003 after the previous owner twisted off the pinion shaft. Got it all put together last summer. Cleaned the carbs - they were pretty bad, put new diaphrams in, lined the gas tank, checked all the wiring connections, scanned a lot of the threads on here regarding getting these older bikes back on the road and performed as many of the items as I could and thought I was ready to put it on the road in August.

 

Tried to start it up, no spark. Back to the forums, rechecked all the wiring, re ohmed the coils and pickup coil, everything tested ok.

 

Everything was pointing to the TCI, got it out from under the battery, opened it up and sprayed everything down with electrical contact cleaner and baked it in the oven for a couple of hours, still nothing, retested the ignition components again, coils and pickup tested ok - must be the TCI; so I ordered the ignitech unit in November. When it arrived it came with the wrong wiring harness for a 93 and they also informed me that it had the wrong program in it.

 

To shorten up this long story, have yet to get the Ignitech program to work. In retesting all the ignition components, the pickup coil did not read out, out of desperation, I was able to find a pickup coil on ebay in February and changed it out. Still no spark with the Ignitech unit, what the heck, plugged the original TCI in and it fired up. It wuld only run with a lot of choke, but hey, it was running. Let it run for 20 minutes or so and shut it down. Came back to it the next day - no spark and the new pickup coil did not ohm at all. Last week found another used pickup coil, ohm'd it when it arrived, tested good. Drained all the fuel that had been in the tank for the past month and refilled with 5gl of gas and a can of Seafoam. Put it in with the original TCI, fired right up - again with a lot of choke. Ignitech still no spark.

 

Let it run for an hour and a half, was slowly able to reduce the choke to about 1/4 to 1/3. but can't take the choke all the way off and if I give it any throttle it dies. tried it again last night, same thing, fired right up with choke, but can't take the choke all the way off and if i give it any throttle at all it dies; so I still have a carb issue to resolve. Just not sure what to look at - more carb cleaning, more Seafoam and let it work it's magic, new parts, float level,...?

[twigg]

Some of those pilot circuit passages are very small. Seafoam is good, but it won't clean out the hardened varnish.

 

Yer gonna have to pull the carbs and do it properly.

 

Which means .... Splitting the rack and, one carb at a time, removing as much as possible, especially all the rubber parts, and boiling them in either pinesol or lemon juice. When they are clean, carb cleaner sprayed in every passage will come out somewhere.

 

There are eight diaphagms to deal with. Replace any with holes.

 

Don't forget the butterfly shaft seals, they are delicate, and they are very old. They will be hard and not sealing as intended, if at all. By the way, I think I have found a substitute for those seals, which are stupidly expensive, and I can let you know in about a week.

 

Replace the jet-block gasket, the needle valves and the float bowl O-ring. Everything else should be okay. There are some tiny o-rings, but they tend to survive quite well.

 

Before the carbs go back on the bike, set the float levels.They are probably okay, but they are easier to measure on the bench. Bench sync the carbs and fully sync once they are running.

 

Check every rubber pipe on and around the carbs. They are all cheap, just get lengths from an auto factor and cut to size. Replace the vacuum caps.

 

Seafoam is great when a bike has been sitting a few months and is hesitant to run well. When it's been sitting for years it can't cope.

 

All of that is harder to describe than to do

 

If you want advice on removing the butterfly valves, just ask ... it is off-putting to many, which is why it's rarely done, but it's an easy job really.

 

KEEP THE CARBS SEPARATE.

 

And take photos, lots of photos during removal and disassembly. They really help later.

[BradT]

Good luck getting it going you will be happy when you do.

 

Brad