Firstly, the frustrating news is that I won't get to cleaning the carbs this Saturday.
Given Valentine's is a Monday night and next weekend is a bad weekend for celebrating it, this weekend will be our time for Valentine's, so no carbs.
I'm actually not complaining as we should hopefully have a nice relaxing weekend, and I should be able to get at them next weekend.
The good news is my shims should be on there way overnight again so I should have them tomorrow.
Now back to the bike...
Grabbed the starter motor and gave it a run with jumper leads directly from the car battery tonight and it spins. It sparked quite a bit with the crappy connection with the jumper lead as it's an old set with the insulation missing off the handles, so I couldn't get a good firm connection, but good enough to show me it still spins.
Here it is in all its grungy glory:
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And cleaned up with the old nearly brittle O ring on the right and the new supple one on the left:
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O ring went on, a bit of engine oil on the pinion, and sat it in place:
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For the observant who have been following this thread, you will notice a serious lack of a cam chain tensioner, which was actually there before... turns out the starter motor can't squeeze in under the cam chain tensioner. I can assure you some choice expletives were uttered as I removed the tensioner...
Starter motor mounted:
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I seem to have misplaced the lead that runs from the starter to the solenoid at the moment, even though the harness and electrics were all put together, so I wasn't able to bolt that to the post and put the cover on tonight.
Cam chain tensioner back where it belongs, and I also repeated the timing checks and the anti clockwise rotation of the knurled knob and crankshaft to ensure it still operates correctly:
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Next up, cleaned up the gasket surfaces on the valve cover and breather cover:
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Oil separators back in:
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New gasket in place:
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Breather cover sat on top:
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