I just joined the club after doing some reading on a problem I encountered with a newly acquired Royal Star. I had owned 2 Honda 750 Ace and a VStar 650 but was ready for the big move, and when the opportunity knocked I went for it!
I just bought a 98 Royal Star that only has 3300 Miles and thought it was a great deal however after getting it home I discovered I may have overlooked the possibility of a bad valve/ring when I noticed it was running bad. I thought I'll get it home and take the carbs appart to clean and off I go on the road. However after a carb cleaning the Front Right cylinder is still cold and it sucks the dollar bill at the tailpipe and in a not so funny way I'm begining to think it will want to suck a lot more dollars.
My next step was to try to do a compression test but I think is almost pointless from the postings above or am I wrong? The motorcycle was originally owned by a guy that knew about cycles but the guy I got it from inherited the bike about 8 years ago and only put 300 miles in the last 3 years, had no clue on proper maintenance or storage of a bike. BTW the fuel in it was nasty, from the miles on it I believe it had not gotten new gas in years.
To sum it up, I got the mistreated Royal Star home and changed the fuel, added techron, put new oil, new plugs, cleaned carbs, and amazingly it runs pretty good (iddle and accel) but can tell that the one cylinder is not getting hot / there is spark and is sucking in air at the tailpipe. Any adjustments in air/fuel mixture only cause a small rise in temperature at the tailpipe. I've only taken the bike to get gas after almost dumping all the gas in the tank and adding a small amount of new gas and it has run with techron for about a total of 1-2 hours at iddle/reving up some. I read that riding it couple of hours at high rpms on the highway may free up the suspected stuck exhaust valve. I don't want to damage the engine further, is it possible to damage it more? What with intereference engines? Is it like with cars? Has it already caused damage?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.