There be no fire in her belly....

My poor LT, Sophie, came home on the back of a tow truck last Monday. I had just left work. Gassed it to take off from the lights and she dies. Roll to a side street. Check I have fuel. Yep fuel flows out of the fuel line when I pull them off. Have electrical power as the bike will turn over on starter but not start.

Put bit of metal (re allen key) up spark plug cap on both sides and check for spark. Nothing. Pull tank and check that spark leads are still in coil. Check. Walk back to work and book tow truck. Glad I work for our states road side assistant company. Must be that I am staff that tow is there within 30 mins.

Bike is off loaded. Pull spark plug and test for spark. Nothing. Engine turns over on starter. Order new coil from Munich Motorcycles. Hopefully I will be firing on all 2 cylinders again.

New coil fitted still no firing up. Jan and I are due top roll north in an hour or so. So we through the bags from the bike into the car. Poor Jan has a 5 hour drive ahead of her.

5 days later we are back home from a wonderful time staying with friends in a beach town. Been years, more like decades since I last swam in the surf.

I have an Omega ignition system sitting waiting for me to fit to the bike. This over rides the bean can and ignition module. I had not yet fitted it as I had stripped the head in the alternator mounting bolt. Bought a set of screw extractors. Drill a hole into the allen head and wind in the extractor. Out the bolt comes. So easy. Had I done this a while back we would have gone north on the bike.

I should have been an apprentice to the Prince of Darkness, Mr Lucas. I am hopeless when it comes to that black magic that flows down the wires. So it takes me sometime today to fit and work out from the wiring diagram how to fit this unit.

Success at last. She fires up and runs. I can't believe the difference the Omega ignition system has made to the running of the bike. No more rattle from the engine. The timing must have been just off and the new system has corrected this.

I set the advance as per the specs in the instructions. The engine is that quite I can hear the fairing screw clips rattle. I have not yet put the grill for the fairing back on.

Tomorrow I will take her out for a run to make sure she is all ship shape.

Comments

Tuning 40mm BING CV carburetors for BMW motorcycles by ear.

Steve Doyle has put together this great and simple guide to tuning your Bing carbs. No need for expensive tuning equipment. So over to Steve...... Any feed back on this How To please email me and I will pass it onto Steve. There are 3 common methods to syncing the carbs. They will all work 1. Shorting the plugs. http://bmwmotorcycletech.info/synchcarbs.htm and http://www.airheads.org/content/view/216/98/ 2. Using a manometer of some sort. Carbtune, Twinmax or home made http://www.airheads.org/content/view/183/98/ 3. Using your ears. No comprehensive articles that I could find.. In the spirit of learning to service and tune at home and after lots of reading, I decided that for me the "by ear" technique might be the most useful, as it doesn't require any special tools and can be performed anywhere. There is no risk of electrical damage to the bike or the one doing the adjusting. It was very difficult to find a comprehensive description of the procedure, so using the combi

On a Sure Footing....

I love my BMW. More than any other bike I have owned. This doesn’t mean that it is not without its blemishes. Take the hair trigger sidestand. Known to fold up when an Alpaca herder in the Andres sneezes and the bike is in Australia. Many a BMW owner has found their bike on its side on the ground. Fairing broken. The sidestand has folded up into the raised position. Why? Because it likes to. Once the smallest amount of weigh transfers off the side stand it will fly up. Also if you have an RT type fairing as mine does you can not put the stand down when sitting on the seat. Well I can’t with my short legs. I have to clamber off the bike while holding it up right and then use centre stand. I don’t trust the sidestand. This Video shows how vicious the original sidestand is. Click on the play button. That all changed yesterday. I fitted a SureFoot sidestand . Moto-Bins in the UK supply these. They are of a very sturdy construction. Comes with full fitting instructions and 2 new

Ride impression of the Yamaha MT-03.....

Yamaha have realeased their new 660 based single. The MT-03. See I so want one....MT-03 The bike can be had in Europe but not here in Aussie land. I have asked Yamaha Australia if they will bring them in. They said "No plans at this stage to introduce the MT03 in to Australia." To rub salt into the wounds, axxess , the forum admin guy at http://forum.monoconnection.nl/ got to ride one. NOOOO!!! So unfair. He translated his ride impression into English for those of us who will not get to ride this. Thank you mate for doing this for us. So lets see what he has to say..... Saturday 16 February I could try the Yamaha MT-03 at Gebben Motors. I could try a brand new red 2008 model. After a short instruction and a warning because of the new tires we were ready to go! The first thing I noticed was the enormous wide steer and the upright riding position It gave me a feeling of absolute control and power! The seat was quit hard but not uncomfortable at all. Unless it was still freez

Wrench'n Ride'n

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