What Now...??

Raindrops in The Pool 

Crappy day today. It's been raining off and on for the past day or so, and Mother Nature is taking her sweet time getting the temperatures warmed up - it's May and still in the SIXTIES, ferchrissakes! The year is almost half over, and it seems like I'm still shoveling snow! 

On the Plus side, I've been able to spend more time in the garage working on my 1978 Kawasaki KZ650 B, which has been sitting idle for about two years now. ('Bad Johnnie"!) Bikes don't like to sit, and this one is no exception. The last time it ran, it "ran when parked" (how's THAT for a cliche'!)  - and it DID! But time passes and leave its inexorable finger on everything it touches, and it sure as hell felt this one up!  

If you check out my previous blog "Time to Freshen Up" it'll give you a bit more of a backstory on this bike - I also wrote about it in the "Bikes I've Saved" section - but since the last time I wrote, I did manage to get the bike started after a simply stupid thing on my part.

The last time I blogged about this bike, I couldn't get it to start, even after rebuilding the carbs...Okay, so I knew it wasn't the carbs. I dug up some directions on how to set the points gap and timing on the beast and did that as well, but still No Joy. Oh, it would crank just fine, but it wouldn't catch. I had spark across all four plugs, fresh fuel, the battery was at 13.25 volts, 160-150-150-160 lbs of compression across the four cylinders so I knew my rings were good...it had Fire (spark), Fuel (the gas, obviously) and Compression (in the cylinders), all the things an engine needs to run, but it wasn't starting!   

I went on several motorcycle forums to decry my problems, and they offered up all kinds of possible solutions, none of which were easy or fast, and I knew it had to be something electrical I was missing...but What??  I went back over everything electrical that I knew about the bike - - and I found it:

A little mechanical lesson first: there are four cylinders on a KZ650B. In the above pic, you're seeing (from bottom to top) Cylinders 1 and 2, indicated by the spark plug caps.

As you sit on the bike, the cylinders from Left to Right are numbered 1, 2, 3 and 4. In the above picture, the spark wire closest to you (on the 'bottom, here...) is Cylinder #1. Cylinder #4 is on the opposite side of the engine, in "fourth place," if you will.

Cylinders 1 and 4 are fired by the same coil (not seen in the pic). Just above Cylinder #1 you can see the second spark wire, which goes to Cylinder #2 - cylinders 2 and 3 are fired by a second separate coil, and these coils are 'mapped' to their respective cylinders by the points plate in order to fire correctly...

Long story Short, I had somehow put the spark plug cap for Cylinder #2 into the Cylinder #1 spot - that, in connection with setting the timing on each pair of cylinders, was throwing off the ignition because the correct spark was not being delivered to the correct plug! Ergo I couldn't start the bike!  (You get all that??) 

And it drove me NUTS until I discovered that! I put the plug caps in their proper locations and Voila'! She started right up! 

Emboldened by this success, I cleaned her up a little - some Mothers Aluminum Polish here and there, did the wheels, cleaned the seat and put her all back together again, and she looked like this:

I had nothing left to do - I was Done. Or so I thought. I go her all put together, but the original throttle cables were feeling sticky, and there was a little fraying on the ends near the bellcrank, so I decided to change them out.

Here you can see the shiny new cables installed and the crappy one I'm holding in my hand - they work a lot better now.

OKAY! So COOL! Nothing else to do, so I decided to hit the button and start her up again, get some oil flowing, get her all hot and lubed up (who says motorcycle mechanics isn't sexy!)...so I hit the start button and...

NOTHING!! I got NOTHING!! 

Everything else worked on the bike - ALL the lights, the horn, headlight - everything EXCEPT the starter button! 

Usually when I play with the button I get some kind of response... (make of that what you will :). 

But Seriously, "WHAT THE FUCK!?" 

I thought feverishly - it HAD to be something I did, but all I did was change out the frickin' throttle cables...I went nowhere near anything electrical.

After some puzzled investigation, it turned out to be a hot wire connection coming off the start switch -  - kinda blurry here, but you get the idea...

I had to cut into that black wiring sleeve to get to it (no real biggie), but sure enough, I plugged it back in, she started right up and there was much rejoicing. It's always the little things, y'know? And everything is connected, somehow. 

So anyway - here she is all dressed up and ready to go. But what now...? ALL the bikes in my garage run now. It was kind of a weird moment for me, because for the last five years or so, this is what I've been trying to do, get everything in there running - and now they DO!