[Blaqkfox]

Y’all are cracking me up 😂.

He really probably does have rations, I wouldn’t be surprised. I’ll have to post a photo of his place if I get the kahunas to attempt to take a photo. It’s wild.

I have taken the bike on two separate outings now, each 1 hour or longer rides with no problems. I even rode by his place and around the backroads there for an hour out of curiosity, and nothing happened.

So I really don’t know what’s going on with this bike. Maybe the petcock got vapor locked, maybe there was some bad fuel in the tank. I have no idea. But it’s only happened those 3 times in the last 600 miles now (I ride a lot). So go figure.

The only thing I have changed since is that metal spark plug cap- traded it out for a rubber one I had laying around. So maybe that’s all it was. Who knows.

[AzCal Retred]

Usually it's the last thing you touched, but with electricity there can always be some voodoo. In my Hydro Power Plant time I had a "Grounded Battery" alarm that always showed up 15 minutes before sunrise in the summer. Turned out to be a thin layer of crystalized mouse urine becoming conductive as the morning dew drifted in and solubilized it into a resistor that bled from the posts to ground...!! A thorough cleaning and Voila, no more time-of-day related ground alarm.

The plug caps seem to be culpable for many issues. The nice bakelite "NGK" ones seem more reliable than the metal-overcoat variety. New fresh fuel, a new spark plug, clean air filter, verified good fuel flow to the carb, NO CRUD in the float bowl, clean well-gapped & properly timed points, valves not too tight, maybe even fresh oil & filter, all of these contribute to making the bike run well and placating the "Bike Spirits" that seem to haunt these old girls.

In Newberry Springs I watched a "Survivalist" buy an old gas station right on the interstate and then incessantly complain that folks kept stopping in to try to gas up and use the phone...   Who could have predicted that? Apparently there's no screening process to qualify one as a Survivalist/Doomsday Prepper.
"Stupidity is like Nuclear Power: it can be used for good or evil, just don't get any on you." Scott Adams, Dilbert

[Adrian II]

At least points won't be a worry on this bike, unlike over in the I.B. section...

A.

[Blaqkfox]

Yeah no points to worry about here, although I like the archaic tech, instead I just have to worry about the pickup on the crank being out of time from the factory per our other thread lol.

Yeah so I bought the bike non running, tanks been cleaned, carbs been sonic cleaned, fresh oil change twice over to ensure I got all the moisture out since it sat for a few years, shit looked like chocolate milk lol, spark plug is new as well, although the plug keeps throwing me off trying to read it, its like its too rich and too lean at the same time, I don't get it. The ceramic by the electrode is still pure white after 400+ miles indicating a too lean condition but the outer edge is heavy with black soot indicating a too rich condition.

Well I take that back, this plug probably only has about 200 miles on it. I changed it out because I pulled the baffler in the header pipe and upped the jet size too large and killed the NGK plug I had in it. This new autolite brand plug I fear might be burning hotter- the ground strap is clean about 3/4 of the way, it should be more like half if its the correct temperature, if I understand correctly, but thats a whole other thread I have going on about my super blue exhaust pipes that I can't seem to figure out... perhaps I should still be running the stock jets since I only removed the baffle or maybe I need to get a high flow air filter and mod the box idk...

At any rate, for now, this problem seems to have resolved itself. Im sure ill post here again if it happens again or I find any indication of what's causing it.

Thanks y'all.

[AzCal Retred]

The center electrode is the only part to be concerned with, that is the spark insulation. The plug thread wall temperature will be the same as the cylinder head, carbon will build up there, nothing of interest. The center insulator gets a "toasted white & blistered" appearance if too hot a heat range for how you ride. Gasoline is black, oil deposits are grey & brown. The plug has to be hot enough to keep the oil deposits burned off so they don't short the insulator and bleed off the spark. Old School tuner Gordon Jennings watched for the black fuel residue "carbon ring" at the base of the insulator, saying "as long as you can see a ring you aren't too lean". The ring moves up towards the tip as it gets richer, down as it leans out. Two-strokes need to see a distinct ring, four-strokes can be leaned out until the ring just disappears. This is of course under load and a fresh plug, run loaded at least a mile or two.

[Adrian II]

perhaps I should still be running the stock jets since I only removed the baffle

No, no, no! Please will you take this on-board?

As tooseevee explains in your other thread, removing the restriction in the pipe WILL make a difference, it is no-longer a stock exhaust, therefore a stock main jet is no longer appropriate.

Anyway, here is the chart of spark plug burn colo(u)rs I was thinking of earlier. If we ignore the black ring on the outside of the plug and look at the electrodes and center insulator, yours still looks quite lean compared to the best one here. Did you cross reference your new plug to match NGK's 9 rating?

or maybe I need to get a high flow air filter and mod the box idk...

According to people who k, free-ing up the intake breathing will ALSO need a bigger main jet!!! Shifting more air to the same amount of gasoline vapour = guess what?

A.

[Blaqkfox]

Yeah it’s just really confusing because not all those charts show the same spark plug readings and other forums say otherwise, idk.

Here I made a video if it’s any help…

https://youtu.be/6sCh5kRLJlo

[Blaqkfox]

I might have finally figured out the misfire issue...

Today the new airbox side carb boot showed up. The old one had some dry rot, and even though it tested fine / wasn't an air leak at idle, I decided to go ahead and replace it just to rule it out for the whole running lean issue.

Well well well, upon replacing that boot when I had the electronics all apart I noticed one of my smaller ground wires had an exposed area. I recently painted the battery box related metal pieces so doubt it could have shorted out to anything, but if anything I would say thats a suspect. Thew some heat shrink on it, maybe now my random power loss will stop.

I also found a 120 main jet and have some 17.5 pilot jets on the way so maybe that will clear things up. Im about to just order a new exhaust too so I don't have to look at this blue anymore.

I am worried about tuning on a new exhaust though, how do you keep it from changing color while dialing the tune in?

Also I went to check my tappets, those have always sounded worryingly loud to me, and im at TDC or close to it on the compression stroke, but I cannot rotate them. Im worried they might be too tight. The bikes only got 2k miles on it but its been a hard 2k miles. Somebody was clearly in there messing with the carb needle height and all sorts of stuff, you know. Makes me wonder if they adjusted the tappets wrongly too. Its always struck me odd that a good 1/3 of the time my compression release won't let me fully depress it to raise the exhaust valve, it only lets me go like 1/2-3/4 of the way and binds, but if I spin the engine over some with the kick starter then I can depress it all the way. Is this a normal function or is it more likely ive got a bent pushrod?

The bike runs well, even though its lean and all. Idk if I should mess with the tappet adjustment or not. Im worried I don't have it at TDC correctly or something. Now ive torn plenty of engines apart, so im used to setting valve clearances on rocker arms and even hydraulic lifters with the shims, but this is the first pushrod engine ive fooled with. I just don't want to mess it up.

[AzCal Retred]

"Makes me wonder if they adjusted the tappets wrongly too." Ha ha ha - get right in there and check them for yourself, it's easy and mission critical. Rectifying PO issues are an essential task, just assume EVERYTHING is screwed up unless you have personally massaged it. "Trust but Verify..." Take pictures & keep notes.

Tappets on these engines loosen as the engine heats up. When warm they should spin with very light finger pressure. Run until warmed up, shut off and leave at TDC or thereabouts. Do this before it hits BBQ temp. Pop off the tappet cover; both the intake & exhaust pushrods should spin freely with little perceptible vertical play. If not, adjust appropriately.  They MUST have some slack at operating temp.

The rockers, tappets and cam followers/lifters will never be silent. IF the lifter bores get worn they will make an audible "clank" as they snap over center left-right on the cam noses. Mine on my red machine have a very spooky agricultural CLANK and are slated for replacement, the black 350 just sounds mechanical. With the red bike's timing cover off and the cams out I can move the tappets radially in the guides maybe 1/32"-3/64" and clearly replicate CLANK the sound.

Another wrinkle is that the tappet rubbing faces aren't guaranteed to wear evenly, so check clearance again after you kick the machine thru a few times to verify that it's the same everywhere. The tappet disc rotates in service, driven by the cam nose. My red bike chewed the cam noses a bit as well as the tappet discs, so I have a replacement pair of cams to slide in there when the new tappets & guides go in.

"There's No problem so big you can't throw money at it"....

[Paul W]

When I first bought my 350 it had a soft exhaust valve seat so the valve recessed quite quickly. I had to adjust the valve clearances every 50 to 100 miles. Usually at the side of the road. It’s a five minute job, so have ago yourself!

It’s easy enough as long as you have spanners (wrenches) with slim heads because there’s not a lot of room in there.

[tooseevee]

 Its always struck me odd that a good 1/3 of the time my compression release won't let me fully depress it to raise the exhaust valve, it only lets me go like 1/2-3/4 of the way and binds, but if I spin the engine over some with the kick starter then I can depress it all the way. Is this a normal function or is it more likely ive got a bent pushrod?

           Yes, that's the way the "compression release" on an AVL "feels" because when you pull that lever it is NOT raising the exhaust valve.

           When you pull that lever it is rotating a small cam that jams against the exhaust valve pushrod holding it UP & preventing the exhaust valve from closing. You must pull on the lever WHILE THE ENGINE IS BEING ROTATED in order for the little cam to jam against the pushrod & keep it from moving back down & closing the valve. Pulling on that lever without the engine turning over doesn't raise or decompress ANYthing.

           You can see this little cam that holds the pushrod up if you pull the tappet cover off. You'll also see the little "tophat" collar that's on the exhaust pushrod.

            The decompression does work IF you rotate the engine while pulling & holding tension on the lever. The proof of this is that you can kill the engine instantly by pulling the lever.

           And do what AzCal sez; get in there & adjust your valves if you haven't already.     

[Adrian II]

One of the down sides of the AVL redesign of the old iron barrel Bullet (at least as implemented by the factory) is that the valve train components are less robust, the tappet stems were slimmed down from the original ⅜" diameter (which worked fine for years) to 7.something mm. The tappet adjuster design was also changed for something flakier, instead of the cup-ended adjuster screwing into the push rod end, sitting securely over the rounded-off end of the tappet, there is a ball-ended tappet adjuster with the ball sitting in a recess ground into the tappet end. I don't know if the plan was to lighten the valve train components to try and help the engines rev faster, but as the stock AVL cams cause valve bounce to set in at 5,800 rpm, I can't see the point of messing with a superior set up.

I don't recall excessive tappet stem wear on my Electra-X, though I do have strong memories of the exhaust tappet's foot snapping off just as I was accelerating uphill...

As Azcal points out, the iron barrel items are not immune from wear, but they can still be less problematical.

Can you retro-fit iron barrel stuff to AVL engines? Yes, but it's not straightforward.

The compression release procedure which tooseevee clearly explains is not helped on the Electra-X by the miserable little plastic lever on the left hand switch cluster, something like the old-fashioned Brit bike decomp handlebar lever will do a better job. This sort of thing.

https://www.baxtercycle.com/product/32-64408/

A.

[Blaqkfox]

Ah ok I’ll try it with the engine warmed up then!

I was reading about how some like to do it with the engine cold and some with the engine hot and others do it with the engine running apparently? I can’t imagine that’s east and mess free.

I thought they should still be able to rotate with the engine cold, no?

I’m glad to hear the “decompression” lever is functioning normally.

I was wondering if there’s a measurement intake from the rocker arms up top? The manual doesn’t mention the rockers at all except in the last instruction that says to “reinstall the rocker cover plates”. Note that this is separate from the tappet cover plate because they mention it separately. But it acts like the only adjustment is checked under the tappet cover so why would I remove the rocker covers?

I assume one would do this to check valve lash? It was stunning to me to read the pushrod adjustment was just checked from the tappet and said “zero clearance” instead of like “.002” or something with a feeler gauge. I guess that makes sense though- I imagine the rocker arms themselves have adjustment screws like normal to set valve lash? A similar setup to like a bmw pushrod engine? Only pushrods I ever did was on a r75/5 bmw last week.

[tooseevee]

Ah ok I’ll try it with the engine warmed up then!

I was reading about how some like to do it with the engine cold and some with the engine hot and others do it with the engine running apparently? I can’t imagine that’s east and mess free.

I thought they should still be able to rotate with the engine cold, no?

I was wondering if there’s a measurement intake from the rocker arms up top? The manual doesn’t mention the rockers at all except in the last instruction that says to “reinstall the rocker cover plates”. Note that this is separate from the tappet cover plate because they mention it separately. But it acts like the only adjustment is checked under the tappet cover so why would I remove the rocker covers?

I assume one would do this to check valve lash? It was stunning to me to read the pushrod adjustment was just checked from the tappet hand said “zero clearance” instead of like “.002” or something with a feeler gauge. I guess that makes sense though- I imagine the rocker arms themselves have adjustment screws like normal to set valve lash? A similar setup to like a bmw pushrod engine? Only pushrods I ever did was on a r75/5 bmw last week.

             No, there are no adjustment screws at the rocker arms.

             The only adjustment is behind the tappet cover, not under the rocker covers.

             There is no "valve lash" as such (like in engines where you set the lash dimension at the rocker end with a feeler gauge). The adjustments are made at the bottom end of the pushrods Cold. The adjustments on your Enfield are made with the piston at TDC such that the pushrods will spin with finger power but zero up & down movement. 

[Blaqkfox]

How very interesting. So there’s no valve lash to be set? It’s just built in? Like if the pushrods have no up and down play and rotate by finger than the valves are set to the correct “lash”? Weird.

Well if it’s supposed to be performed cold then mine are too tight, I can’t rotate them at TDC on the compression stroke. I’ll try one more time to get to exact TDc, I might be slightly off TDc, I have to apply so much force even with the decomp lever engaged I kept rolling over TDc. It got to the point I put a rod down the spark plug hole to try and get it as close as I could before it slipped over the top.