Bad starter

[MoFoHo]

Hi all! Well my baby finally arrived last night and I must say she looks in great condition for her age! She's a 1981X 550L. (I'll try get some pics up in the future if I can borrow a digital camera) But she's hard to start! I havent got a manual with the bike and this is probably gonna sound real dumb (I havent even been on a bike for 15 years) but have you any tips for starting these bikes? The headlamp is on all the time which surely takes some juice out of the starter? Do you have to hold the start button in until it fires? I know that she needs some new spark plugs cos the previous owner told me so(any suggestions which type?), but I got her started a few times and it was really hard restarting when she was warm?! It's like I was always flooding the engine? Sorry if thses questions are kind of dumb, but I'm a newbie, never owned a bike before. Any hints and tips you folks could give me would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Steve.

[gspaul]

Can you give us some history of the bike,has it been layed up for a while, any mod's?.
You will need a manual, generaly bike's of this age need to have the carby's pulled apart ,cleaned and set up.
It's not as hard as it sound's, any one can do it.
Do a search for the spark plug type, not certain if it's the same as my 650( ngk D8EA)
In your own best interest you should post this in tec info, you will get a better responce.
Good luck!