Fixing the 500!!!

[Porkchop]

Well all, I promised you this thread. I chronicled my journey over at VFRW and I decided it was time to bring it over here. Its been about a month and a half of work inbetween a crazy work schedule and finishing school. But I had to do something with this bike. I was getting horrible lowball offers becasue it didnt run and I just couldnt imagine parting it out with 3,500 miles. To bring anybody up to speed that didnt remember last summer I got the carbs cleaned and put them back on, and all the bike did was put down the street. So I sent the whole bike in to my used dealer of choice, and got a phone call a week later that said that the bike was pushing out low compression and that the guy thought it was either warped rings, or a dropped valve. I couldn't investigate any further becasue a day later my car blew its transmission, so the money to fix the bike went out the window.

Fast forward to 2 months ago. I finally got the bike shipped back to me from the dealer. Yes, it was sitting at the shop for 6 months. So my mom's bf heard it came back and is a tinkerer. So he decided to help me out and take it to his place. He decided it was time to truely figure out what was wrong with the thing. So we started out on 2/26 tearing it apart.



- Checked the plugs, NGK iridiums. No oil on them. A little bit of carbon, but I polished them right up.

- Checked the spark. There is spark to all 4 plugs. It didn't seem like the spark was very big, but the battery was weak.

- Checked the compression. Cylinders 2 and 4 checked in at 75psi. Cylinder 1 registered at 72psi and Cylinder 3 registered at 68psi. Not sure if that is a problem, but he didn't think it was too bad.



- Emptied the tank of all old gas and put fresh stuff.

- Threw some ether in her and this happened.... (Clicky for videos below....)

http://s6.photobucket.com/albums/y22...-48-09_295.mp4



No valve noises, just nice purr from the engine. We dont think there are any valve problems anymore. And it is questionable that there ever really was a ring problem, even though 3 was down a couple psi, the dealer made it seem like there was no compression. But we're back to the same place we were. The engine dies out when she returns to idle for too long. Now we're going back to carb problems. The guy said he cleaned the carbs, and they seem to be functioning properly, but she just doesn't want to roll over too easy. The other thing you will notice in this next video is a tad bit of smoke from the exhaust. It isn't oil smoke, but it seems like smoke from when a gasket is leaking. Brian seems to think that it isn't a blown head gasket, just isn't seated right from sitting for so long.

http://s6.photobucket.com/albums/y22...-51-14_944.mp4

-Replaced old fuel filter becasue it is dripping from the fitting.

Friday 3/2 Update....

- Brian pulled the carbs during the week when I couldn't assist. He opened up the two outside float bowls to check for movement and cleanliness. The inner two were hard becasue he couldnt get the covers off. (Quite a trick to get them off... but we did tonight) He also fixed the choke problem. The #1 cylinder choke arms was frozen in place and was not letting the rest pull open. A little PB Blast and they glide just fine.

-Tonight we put them back on and reatached all of the cables. We had quite a hard time getting the float bowls to fill up. At first the bike would fire with ether, but would die when the ether was burned up. At first we thought it wasn't running on gas, but then we opened up a dump screw and no gas came out. Well, a little fidgeting with them and finally gas got to the bowls. Remember that I am on gravity feed. We turned the bike over once or twice and then this happened.....

http://s6.photobucket.com/albums/y22...-56-03_597.mp4

-What we did notice though was that with the choke fully on, the rpm's never rose as the bike warmed up. It just sat at a constant 3500rpm. When Brian rolled over the throttle we could see gas misting out of 2, 4, and 1. But no mist out of cylinder 3. So we opened up the dump screw and no gas. Which meant no gas in that bowl. Which meant the engine was only running on 3 cylinders. So we pulled the carbs AGAIN and wrangled that bowl cover off of 3. It looked damp, which only confused things, but we cleaned it out again and made sure the float was working correctly. By then it was midnight, so we decided to call it a night. Didn't want to anger any neighbors.



But the major triumph of today is that the bike is self sustaining again!!! It ran with choke for a good 5 minutes before we turned her off. Another triumph is that there was 0 smoke from the exhaust (as noted by me pointing to brian in the video), which means no gasket problem.

3/10 Update

Been unable to wrench myself due to my graduating capstone project. But he has tinkered with it some more. He pulled the carbs apart again and cleaned the seats and other stuff real good. He had it running well enough without any choke on that it got warm enough for the fans to kick on. He still wants to work on the idle screw and the throttle play a bit...

Ran over today to borrow his battery jump for my friend's 636 and wanted to see it run. I barely had a half push on the starter and she fired up immediately. Before we had to crank and crank and crank to get it to even grab. He thinks we are so close to it being ready to put back together and ride.

3/15 Update

Went over tonight after work and.......... I rode it for the first time since July 15th of last year!!!! Not gonna lie, it felt a little weird, but totally awesome! I'm so used to my clutch petal now and not a clutch lever.

Threw the new battery in, installed the new fuel line, buttoned her back up, warmed her up nice and hot and went. The idle was still a bit too high, but that will just need some fine adjustment as the carbs break back in. Both me and Brian rode it around the neighorhood for a bit. And on my last ride back through the neighborhood, it died. But thank god, it was only a small idiot hickup. We haven't finished running the new fuel line where it will end up and its just kind of sitting on the side. Well the excess slack fell down at the side and the carbs starved themselves. Doh.

But we are getting very close, and it just plain felt good to get back on two wheels!

3/18 update:

On today's agenda was to install the new fuel line and fuel filter in the position that I will end up, try to unbend the clutch lever from the fuckery that I did to it, and go for a ride in the georgeous weather we were having.

Unfortunately the ride never happened, due to some complications followed by tornadoes that came rolling through the area.

We went to install the new fuel line and fuel filter, started her up at first hit, and realized gas was dripping from the bottom of the petcock were I did Jamie Daugherty's gravity feed mod last year. So we emptied the tank through the fuel filter, and undid the side cover to the petcock. The gasket must not have been in place, so we greased it up and put it back together. Put the tank back on, filled it up, and nothing.... no gas to the fuel filter. No matter what we did, no gas would flow to the the filter. Emptied the tank AGAIN and decided to pull the petcock from the tank. We got it all apart and tried cleaning it out real good. Were not quite sure if the petcock on the bike is the original vf500f petcock now. It just doesn't seem right compared to the FSM pictures. But we got it pretty clean and installed it back to the tank. Filled the tank up again, installed the fuel line and filter, and no flow again. So we hooked it up to the engine to see if a running engine would pull gas through the line, no go. Just by chance I told Brian to pull off the new filter.... and boom, gas came flowing out of the line!?!?!?

At this point we were thouroughly confused. This is a brand new inline fuel filter that gas ran through it the very first time we hooked it up, and now gas will not even enter into the filter. I have no words to describe how stumped I am. Because we ran the fuel line straight into the engine and it ran perfectly fine.

And then we broke the clutch lever while trying to bend it back...

So just as we got to that point I realized the gorgeous sunny 70* weather had turned almost freakishly black. And then the tornado sirens went off....

F*ck this day....

3/25 Update

Wow, I can't believe it has already been a month since we started wrenching!

I woke up this morning and was told my bike was being brought home. What I didn't know was it was being ridden home! When I heard it coming into the driveway I got very excited. He rode it home, about 25 miles, mostly highway, with no problems....

Work was shitty, stressful, and angering today, and by the end of the day I was about to kill someone. I pulled into the driveway and realized she was sitting there ready to go. I ran inside and threw on my gear. It had rained all day and was a bit chilly, so I had to be careful with road conditions. But I got about 50 minutes of riding in before it got dark and I couldn't feel my hands anymore from the cold.

I have had her 2 years now, and she has never run this good. The power is nice and strong, and the dead spot between 3000-4000 rpm is now gone. I would say she is mechanically about 93% right now. The idle still needs a bit of adjusting, but the more she runs, the less it seems like a problem. It also needs new fork seals and heavier fluid. Eventually, if I were keeping it for the long haul I would have Daugherty put in heavier springs for my fat ass so there isn't as much dive....

3/29 Update

So since the bike has been home for the last week, we have gotten about 85 miles on her. Now that she is mechanically sound, I have some quick questions about plastic repair. I explain a majority of my questions in the video I made, but I was wondering what was the best way to repair the back mounting points on the front fairing??? Right now I am riding her naked (hah ). You see what I mean later in the video....

http://youtu.be/wDjgqrrwLtA

4/1 Update
Another 35 miles today after work. The bike is running stronger and stronger and I'm trusting it for longer jaunts. I really need to get these new BT45s spooned on because as I have shaken the rust off, I am pushing the tires and suspension harder, and I dont want to blow the old front. If I had some extra money right now, I would definitely do stiff springs, heavier fork oil, gold valves, and some new fork seals. But otherwise this thing is a fucking riot to ride...

I hope to decide what I'm going to do with the mouting tabs in the next couple days or so. I have this Saturday off and I am going to do the fix that day. I've been riding her naked for so long now, I forget what it feels like to ride with the fairing. I'm 6' 1" so I dont remember that fairing doing much anyway.... lol