Well here I go again. A little history before we begin down the road. For years I have teased the wife about getting a scooter or one of those three wheel jobs. Mostly it was just to poke at her, but I have always hloped that she would take me up on it. Then one day she said that if I got her something like my CB that she would. As luck would have it I had a buddy that was wanting to get rid of two 1972 CB350's. The price was right so I bought them. The wife can't back out now. It took me a while to get up to PA to pick them up, but I did so last weekend.
The wife is pretty excited and scared sine she has never ridden before. I can get her through the MSF courses for free through the Navy so she will take those.
The condition of the bikes are much better than my 750 was. I am going to focus on the burgundy one since it is in better condition and I know it ran a couple years ago. The red one I am not sure what I am going to do with it yet. Right now it is a parts bike, but hopefully I can either fix it up for the boy or fix it up enough to sell.
On with the build. This is the starting platform.
and the parts bike
Since I know it ran a couple years back I wanted to see if I could get it started and running before I tear everything down. The bike kicked over just fine and seemed to have compression based on the sound coming from the exhaust. I checked the petcock bowl and screen and they looked nice and clean so I put some fuel in the tank. Opened the petcock and then cracked open the float bowl drain screws. I allowed gas to flow until it came out clean. Since fuel was getting to the carbs I hoped that it was getting through the carbs. The spark plugs look damn near brand new.
I don't have a battery for it yet so I used the one from my truck. Hooked everything up, but got nothing but a tail light. Absolutely nothing happened when I thumbed the starter. I looked around a bit and found a couple of wires just twisted together underneath some electrical tape. The wiring diagram shows that there should be a 15amp fuse there. I happened to have a single ATC blade fuse holder in my electrical parts bin so I temporarily used wire nuts to hold things together. Tried it again knowing nothing would happen and I was correct. Looked around some more and didn't see anything glaringly wrong so I decided to jump the solenoid. The bike started to turn over. Unfortunately, no matter what I did I couldn't get it to do anything other than turn over. It never even attempted to start.
The weather is turning to crap so I decided to put everything away. I guess tomorrow I will try and pull the plugs to see if they are firing. If they are all I guess is left is that the crabs aren't providing fuel.
Hello tomorrow: It bothered me that no lights other than the tail light come on. So I wondered if the ignition switch and or the handlebar switch are routing power through them. Or if the starter solenoid is routing power off of the additional leads. Only having the tail light on had me scratching my head until I realized I must have turned the key past the run position into the park position. Sure enough that is what I had done, but it didn't help the no start condition. I checked the wiring and I had continuity and subsequently power where needed. I decided to pull the plugs and check for spark. Right side check. Left side...Houston we have a problem. I got spark, but it looked like the plug had never been used. It looked brand new. It was then I realized there was something wrong with the left side carb or fuel delivery.
I checked for fuel flow to that carb again and I wasn't getting any. I scratched my head a bit since I got some yesterday. I decided to check the other carb and I wasn't getting any out of that carb either. Just to try things I switched the petcock from normal to reserve. At that point I only got flow out of the right side fuel line. I looked in the tank and sure enough the supply tube was not there so I was only getting fuel in the reserve position which only feeds the right carb. Hooked everything back up, switched the petcock to reserve, and within a few seconds she roared to life. Only running on one cylinder, but she did so beautifully.
Now that I know it will run I will commence with the tear down. Let the fun begin.