I Sure Could Use Some Sparks

No, not my one of my favorite caffeinated alcoholic beverages, though they are quite tasty.  In between clearing away the snow and ice from the driveways and sidewalks today and vacuuming the floors in the house I took some of my day off to test for spark on the GS.

In another positive development both spark plugs were producing spark.  I want to make sure that the petcock on the gas tank is not clogged so I will disassemble that clean it as best I can.  I will also get some new hoses and once that is done that and the carbs already clean there should be no reason that the engine shouldn't fire.  There will be fuel and spark so there should then be fire.  Hopefully I can make some progress to that end over the weekend.

We are supposed to get 4-6 inches of snow tomorrow so hopefully I wound have to spend the entire day clearing snow :-(

On an unrelated note here is a video of me firing up the 2002 SV650s that normally sits silently in the background in most of my pictures and videos.

All the Kings Horses and All the Kings Men…

…weren’t needed to get my carbs back together again.

This Saturday I finally finished cleaning my carbs with very little incident.  There was one little hiccup, somehow I lost the spring that goes on the end of the pilot air screw on the right hand carburetor.  Upon further assessment it would seem to me that the point of that screw is to keep tension on the threads of the screw so that it doesn’t work its way out with the engines vibrations.  So I set out to find a replacement spring, I didn’t have to look much farther than the nearest clicky-pen.  The spring was the same diameter as the original, though a lighter duty it appeared so I cut it down to length leaving it a little longer than the stocker hoping that will give it a similar tension to the original, only time will tell now.

This week will be spent testing the rest of the ignition system for spark and cleaning of the fuel petcock on the gas tank if those two things go well, then a test firing this could be in order for the weekend.

Really all the more to share today is some before and after pics of the carburetors.

I should mention that there are links to my YouTube channel and Picasa page with all the videos and pics from my project if you want to see them all in one spot.

One Acid Spill Later...

So after my first attempt jumpering the solenoid the night before last, I put the battery on the charger and left it to charge overnight.  When I came out in the morning there was a small pool of liquid under the battery.  After some googling I found that a battery left on charge too long could overflow out the aptly named overflow tube.  Further googling revealed that you can neutralize battery acid with baking soda.  Upon application I heard some fizzing so I definitely had a battery acid incident.  Have no fear it has been resolved!

Despite the small spill the battery had re-charged and was ready for testing.  Upon further thought earlier in the day I decided that all the sparking unnerved me so I decided to wire a proper switch to jumper the solenoid.



Basically just a momentary push button switch with some 10 gauge wire and connectors attached.  Doing this made me feel better about the whole affair and now I can proceed with engine testing while running down the original electrical fault if I like too.  Below is a video I took of the test...



After that I disassembled the left carb, much like the right one there was no clogging of the jets, just some varnish on certain parts, however I will complete a thorough cleaning as with the right carb.  Also with the help of some people on CafeRacer.net (specifically Hillsy on the forum there) I learned that the mystery hose connections were breather ports for the carb bowls and that they just needed to have new hose put on and routed down by the swingarm where the float bowl overflow tubes go to.

I am starting a run of 12 hour shifts for the next three days so we'll see if I can get anything done before the weekend.  Either way stay tuned for more!