It's ALIVE!

OK, well, this is embarrassing. Did you know that most motorcycles have a kill switch to shut off the engine? When this kill switch is on, the bike won't turn on no matter how many times you try to turn it over. Well, you guessed it.

My trouble starting my motorcycle after my carb cleaning had nothing to do with the job I did, and everything to do with little details like making sure the kill switch was off.

Once I figured that out, thanks to the suggestion from someone on the GS Forum, the bike started right up. I had to adjust the idle and the air mix screws, but it's now running at just about 1400 rpms at idle when it's warm.

Of course, owning an old bike means never having to say you're done.

Now that I've replaced the intake boots, the airbox boots, and cleaned and rebuilt the carburetors, I can see that I have a small oil leak from the camshaft tensioner.

Guess what that means! I get to remove the carbs all over again!

OK, I think I'm going to leave that job for the end of the summer when I replace the seals in the tensioner and, at the same time, adjust my valves.

In the meantime, I'm gonna enjoy my bike.

Here it is now!