superhawk996

Right after posting I remembered that I have a '97 airbox, there's no drain on it.

If the airbox has a drain, many vehicles do, it could be coming from that. I can't remember what they're called, but it looks kinda like a hose with the end smashed flat and acts as a check valve. Duckbill? If oil from the crank case vent accumulates enough and/or the K&N is oiled heavily enough the oil could drip out of the drain.

The bike had a little over 50k when I sold it and almost 70 when it died, I believe it was still on the oil I sold it with and it had never been checked.

Every engine consumes some oil, even if it's not enough to notice, and I'm guessing that at some point in the 10+ thousand miles of neglect/abuse the engine started using more oil than normal. I showed up to check it out 'knowing' that there was no fucking way the motor was blown and it had to be something else. There was nearly no oil in it and what was in it looked horrifying.

Very possible, it has been a long time for me. I recall people saying they had the FI light come on when hitting the brakes which makes me think that the brake light is sharing ground with the other stuff.

Pants only right?

IIRC, all of the wires at the test connector have to be joined. If you made several separate bundles and didn't join them all I think it won't be right. It's been a long time since I did this repair or researched it so do check.

When I bought my first '97 it exhibited classic symptoms of clogged idle jets, it wouldn't idle at all without the choke on and ran like shit 'till I got pretty far into the throttle. It turned out to be a synch issue. It was so far off I assume someone did it, but I can't understand why they'd do that. If it wore to that condition someone had to fight with it for a very long time for it to get to the point it was at. Either way, it was crackhead shit that got it where it was, and the seller happened to be a crackhead so go figure. What alerted me to it was looking at the throttle blades, they were very obviously off. I didn't have a manometer so I used a piece of wire as a feeler gauge. I initially assumed I'd have to re-do it the right way but wanted to see if it needed more than just a synch, it ran so great I never did anything else. I later sold it to a friend that rode the shit out of it. It still exhibited no signs of needing a synch, but I assume that a manometer would have shown something and maybe it could run even better even tho there was no sign of an issue. He then gave it to his son who proceeded to ride the piss oil out of it 'till it blew up. There were conflicting stories so I don't have an exact number, but somewhere between 10 and 20k is how long it takes to kill one after you decide to completely ignore the oil, and it was ridden pretty hard.

Maybe he just needs to cross the equator during rides to even it out.

Hazard Fraught, keep it under 20MPH and it should be fine might not kill you.

😆

That's because I'm not so picky about rental trailers.

No tips for not getting a junky one, but for the relatively short haul and light load I wouldn't sweat it. They have utility trailers with drop down tailgates/ramps, but might be too short to get a decent angle where the bike doesn't bottom out half way up. See if he has a spot where you can park with the truck's rear tires high, a driveway ramp usually works, or bring ramps/blocks to drive your rear tires onto so that the whole trailer is tilted down making the ramp to trailer bed more level. Or the floor jack and lift at the hitch.

I'd cruise that.

There's the hassle of having to fiddle with the choke, and when it sits a long time it takes a while of cranking to re-prime the carbs, but the system hasn't let me down. Upsides, you won't have a FPR or harness test connector failure.

1" wide bicycle tires of the hardest compound available so he can't go fast.

If you call me wetback or redneck, I'm good with it. What's the Cuban National Anthem? Row, row, row your boat

So Mike, the true answer to your question is-take it to a shop when you need tires.

If it ain't leaking it's empty!

On my quest for an alternator rotor: I ordered one, then was messaged saying they couldn't find it. The same seller had another one in a different listing with much higher mileage which I didn't like, but I ordered it anyway. Right after that I found another person selling a "NOS" rotor for not much more so I cancelled the second and ordered the NOS. When I took the protective sleeve off the slip rings it was obviously used, but very little so I was gonna let it go, but the measured resistance is double of spec., 7 ohms and it should be 3.5. I messaged them and they refunded me. He had bought out a dealership's entire stock, saw this was still in the box and assumed it was new. My guess is that someone installed it then realized it was defective and it was never returned to the supplier. I'll probably install it and see what it does. In theory it should do something which should let me know if the rest of the system works before I hunt down another rotor.

The carbs should clean up pretty easily as long as they're not corroded. Hook up a battery and fire that bitch up! You had said something about your carbs not being stock; what's on it and is there a reason to swap back other than originality? If it's not some kind of hack job swap just run with them.

I was thinking that if it had sat all this time you could have gotten a large concentration of settled metals in the sample throwing it off, but if you mixed it all up that shouldn't be the case. Unless you want to do a tear down I'd wait. Run it, see how it sounds, then send in another sample. If there's no bad sounds from it I doubt you could hurt it by running it and that would let you get more data before getting further into the project.

Did you run the engine before draining? Also, at what point during draining did you pull the sample; right after plug out, around half way drained, near end of drain?

Cost of equipment: Somewhere between $10 and $20k. Depends on the tires and wheels, how fast/easy you want it to be, how fast/easy you want the balancing to be, how safe you want it to be (for yourself as well as the wheel/tire).

You need different eyes. They're all stronger than chicken wire, and they're all better options than the drilled pipe you installed. They'll all flow a fuck ton better than what you installed so they'll have a fuck ton less stress to deal with. Hardware cloth is the weakest of the things I mentioned, if there will be rocks flowing rapidly with the water it might not hold up, but will likely do better than the drilled piece of metal you installed due to it's ability to let the water through. Expanded metal is probably your best option; it's cheap, strong, easy to find, easy to cut, and soft enough to shape easily. There are lots of options on hole size so you can choose the rock size you're willing to let through. Perforated sheet ranges from being about as flimsy as what you installed all the way to shit you couldn't bend or cut without machinery.