Electric start problems (mostly when cold)

[tkent02]

Yes, voltage should continue to rise slightly with increasing RPM. If the Voltage goes up with small RPM increase and then comes back down with further RPM increase you have more problems, a little more preventive maintenance to do.

[Triam]

I will join the group that suggests a battery change, but will go a bit farther.

I know you said you checked the valve clearances, but if you have no idea how long it had been before that that they were checked, you may have had some crud that was stuck in the valve seats. Now that the engine has been running, the crud has been worn away, letting the valves get all the way down to the seats, instead of resting on the crud. That wil tighten up the clearances to the point that the bike will be harder to start.

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Steve's very right. I've seen this problem before on my bike. If you buy some seafoam and run it through your engine it'll clear out a bunch of that crud. Some say that you can hook up a bottle of seafoam directly to the gas line and run it for a while. You'll have white smoke coming out the exhaust for a while, but they say that it's an awesome way to clean out carbon deposits.

[alexlawriewood]

The valve clearances were horrendous before, think we worked out some of them were ajar the whole time, so that's probably a good idea. Thanks for the Seafoam stuff, never heard of it before.

I'll run through all the stator paper measurements on Saturday, helping a mate reassemble his CB which's disassembled at mine so I'll be out there anyway. I'll post up my findings in case anyone's interested. If I'm lucky, maybe I'll finally be able to reconnect those heated grips...