hey all,
i'm picking up on a lot of carb-hate-vibe in the tech section here.
although it's easy to point a finger at those four distinct sources of frustration on the backside of the motor you should seriously consider your electrics.
case in point:
i bought my 750 about 10 years ago for a whopping $350 us dollars. you can imagine what a beaut she was.
anywhat after about four years a did a frame off rebuild/rewire/bob job.
i was dirt poor and made some tough choices (paint and new forks i could actually see, wiring was invisible).
so i cobbled the wiring harness back together the best i could.
ran like a champ for another four years, but over the past two or three years startred to develop intermittent stumbling and acceleration problems that just couldn't be cleared away no matter how many times the carbs were cleaned and adjusted. sometimes a cylinder or two would drop out and wet conditions would cause any number of random issues with performance.
finally about two days ago the bike lost all electrical power, this after a 400 mile ride not three days earlier!
after a good hour's worth of cussin', canoodlin' and kick startin' (my bike is kick only) i found the white wire for the voltage regulator broken off at the connector for the alternator wiring harness at the back of the engine, it had simple rotted off.
a quickie bypass job limped her home after i pulled the fuses for the headlight and taillight.
upon further inspection the harness connectors were all in pretty lousy shape. many of the connections on the back side of the motor had become corroded from repeated wet downs and the occasional battery overflow. some had completely mineralized and simply snapped off in my hand.
so i went to the parts store and replaced all the connectors in my harness with sealed trailer connectors, upgraded to blade fuses, crimped down a loose female terminal on the coil power connector (black wire with a white trace) and put reasonable amounts of electrical contact grease on each of the connectors (blade style and sealed).
my bike hasn't been this nice in a minute.
no more stumbling at idle or on take off, no more milwaukee vibrator syndrome, the bike idles smoothly and cleanly @ 900rpms and i never touched the carbs.
although we like to blame the air-fuel mixers for many of our frustrations i feel many of our common gremlins come from the copper spaghetti hiding under our seats...
