Hudson’s Rather Random Homepage

I didn’t have the brilliant idea of photo documenting things yet, so no photos for this chapter, the next one will have them, for now, you get more written hijinks. Yay for you! The next post will have more seriousness to it, I swear. :P If you like, you can probably just skip around here and glance bits out, or just skip to the bottom again.

After this bike has been sitting around (for an all compiled FOUR YEARS if you count my time and the time of the guy before me), thats a hell of a long time for a bike to just sit there. Stuck, unstarted. WITH GAS IN THE TANK. Did I mention that we had to move the thing around with the clutch down because the gearbox seemed to be locked? Oh, well, I just did! How about that.

So, Me and one of my flat mates spent the day in the garage, much to the idle passerby amusement or curiosity, working on a motorcycle they didn’t even know I had. (It was under a tarp in the garage keeping the dust off many may spiders, at least I did something to cover it :P) worse yet, I haven’t had a properly stocked garage workshop since Vero beach (several years ago), thankfully, tool guy next door gave me permission to raid his massive collection anytime I need.
The first thing I did was run through the basics again. Okay, whats wrong with it?

Here is how my usual checklists go, you have several things; Problems, Questions, Solutions, and Actions. Solutions and Actions are often the same thing, just..figure it out, kay? I’m nuts, shuddup and read my neat bullet list.

• P: Reportedly won’t turn over. [Verified, Duh..]
• Q: When it did turn over, back in the stone age, it supposedly wouldn’t idle. (Unverified, duh again.)
• P: Last owner mumbled something vague about gearbox and electrical problems. (Unverified, taking this guy with metric tons of salt, too.)
• A: Check the battery, looks fairly new, but its dead as a doornail.
• S:Track down a charger from next door tool guy, (oh, it’s dead too! Mutter and swear.)
• A: Make shopping list, one battery charger, plus other things we add along the way.

Well, that was a relatively short round of problems and solutions, so we shelf the electrical check and decided to move on the the more mundane and tiresome things, such as.. what are we going to do about the half tank of MOONSHINE sitting in my tank?

• P: Tank full of really, really sour gas, not good for engine, need to get it out, /all/ of it. And bleed the fuel lines, too.
• Q: Can we just pop a hose off the bottom? No, its just a trickle, it would take hours.
• A: Gather up supplies needed to make a siphon.
• P: Find out that we don’t have the supplies to make a real siphon.
• S: Put on Mcgyver music and MAKE one anyways, dammit!
• P: While entertaining and funny, home made syphon hose is just too small, and will again, take hours.
• A: Mutter and growl alot. Think up new solution.
• S: Run next door and hijack a 2 and a half foot length of radiator hose off a shelf from the tool guy next door. (Thanks tool guy!)
• P: flatmate reacts to the ‘Hey, you ready to see me get a mouthful of old gas?’ line on the way back with ‘Ugh..noo..’, flatmate is gullible.
• A: Put tube in tank, put bucket under tube, put tube near face and pretend to pucker up for the big suck. Hesitate, then lower hose and start it with a squeeze bottle I had laying around instead, because mcgyver would do it that way, and mcgyver fucking owns.
• A: Have a chuckle with the gullible one as the tank DUMPS its contents and then stinks up the wide open garage despite a stiff breeze.

Tank empty, good! Tank NOT PROPERLY SECURED! That would be ‘not good.’ for those arriving late to class. Seems that some genius, (wild guesses anyone, anyone?) Had removed the tank once before, and either removed, or lost the pad that goes at the front tank bracket, so the tank shakes and rattles around. Like the katana bikes don’t vibrate enough already.

File that problem for later.

I spend a moment to examine under the tank after undoing the two bolts and rubber shims that hold it to the frame. all looks good, a couple of the o-clips are a little knackered, but they still do their job, another knickknack on a growing list, time for some real hose clamps. A quick labeling to make sure We keep them straight. We end up making use of the ‘mini siphon’ for a while to get at the gas the big hose couldn’t get at, and then off comes the tank.

Gave it a good wash and flush, all sorts of nasty shit came out. You do not want to know, just trust me. Flooded it, drained it, flooded it again, pressurized it with a compressor and let it blow out its petcock and nipples a few times to make sure they were nice and clear, then finished off by flushing a little denatured alcohol through it and giving it a good swish or two for good measure before letting it air dry with the compressor hose propped in the lid.

Did the trick nicely, tank is nice and clean inside, and no sign of the nasty residue at all. There was a little bit of liquid left in it, but only a bit, not more than you would get with warted down gas anyways. :P

Now that the tank is off, I go after the air box and filter, all stock, and give them the onceover. The air filter is brand spanking new, never been used. Good!

However, the airbox has about 4 cups of black oil in it, NOT good. No idea how or when this happened, or how long the stuff has been there. So I flushed that out too, drain tube and all.

Next I check the airways and such, I found one of them was glued in wrong, it wasn’t seated properly, suggesting the airbox was tampered with at some time by somebody not quite paying attention. I pop it off the carbs and get to fixing. Took a little reworking the seal to get it to go back into the shape it should be, after being pinned for so long in a bad crimp, but it eventually behaved. A little love, and all is happy in airbox land.

I took a peek into the carbs for a moment, oddly..they seem in strangely good condition..I popped one of the tops and had a look at the rubber, it looked good too. I know that it probably needs a carb job, but it sure as heck doesn’t look like it for some reason..I looked a little deeper, carefully having a peek down inside without disturbing the rubber too much. It almost looks like the carb’s haven’t even been used.

File that under ‘WTF?’ for now, right up there with the kill switches and the oil in the airbox.

So far, we were doing okay. No show stoppers popping up.

I threw the bike back together, airbox and all. Aired up the tires..rear holds fine. Front holds..okay-ish. there is a slight deformation on the left side of the wheels lip, which leads to leaking if the wheel is positioned on it. Funny, I don’t see how you do that just tipping a bike over, and why did he put new forks on anyways? and why does the frame seem so damn new? Why am i getting more questions than answers here? Are we confused yet, yes? no?

Okay, so, we need a battery charger..and checking the oil window..it looks empty? Thats not good.. okay, so oil too.
I make a quick run out to target and pick up some of the proper oil for the bike, I grab some booster and cleaner additives too, just to give the fresh gas a little more kick if i need to add any later. A quick stop by the Exxon on the way back, and we have everything we need to attempt a resuscitation of a long dead bike. I’m not expecting much, but I need to at least see if the thing will /attempt/ to turn over..otherwise, we might have a much bigger engine problem than we thought.

The telling moment is getting close. Is it a lost cause, or is it possible to resurrect this thing?

We get back, we spend a while messing with the charger trying to get it to recognise the damn battery. thats the problem with modern chargers, if a battery is really, REALLY discharged, the ‘computer’ flips out and thinks you disconnected it or something. you have to babysit it for a while and keep re-starting the cycle when the computer ‘errors out’, until the battery has enough juice that the sensors in the charger keep sensing it.

Annoying, huh? :P

Meanwhile, I’m musing over the fact that this thing feels like its stuck in a gear and locked up. Katana’s are oil cooled bikes, everything from the radiator to the gearbox and the clutch, its all oil. Well, the oil peeper window looks a solid color, it LOOKS empty..So i pop open the fill port and have a look inside. Can’t see anything either..

Okay, so, we move to plan A, pop the cork on the oil pan and see if anything comes out, if not, throw some in, if so, it probably needs a change anyway.. :P

Grab oil catch, grab wrench, get to work. Done this a million times before. Of course, on the one million and one time, it throws me a whole new curve ball. As the oil nut comes out, the contents come GUSHING out. It’s not just oil, its too watery, its like really oil thick gas, and it reeks like gas too. Before I can have abject horrified images of some seriously ugly engine damage inside or something, the oil catch floods over, and I’m suddenly faced with a potently very flammable problem on my slightly clutter garage floor.

Let me fill you in on a little secret, I might be a complete screwball, but I do not fuck around when it comes to solving things. Here i have what looks like at least a gallon of gas and oil running across my garage in an attempt to make it outside. In its path are electrical outlets, a battery charger, and a plugged in power drill.

Can you see the bad situation getting horribly worse here? Good.

• P: Garage is about to go up in a flaming inferno.
• P2: Bike is in potential danger.
• P3: I’m not wearing leather at this very moment, and therefor my ability to withstand flames for slightly longer periods of time is greatly reduced.
• P4: My hair is probably flammable.
• S: Grab the nearest solution to sopping up messy nasty spills in a hurry. LINT.

Yes, I said lint. Lots of it, collected out of the dyer catch. It’s a perfect sop rag, didn’t you know this trick? the stuff soaks up fluids better than a sponge, and holds it too. It soaks it up, holds it, and doesn’t let it run out when you pick it up. just roll it out of your dryer catch and store it in a box someplace where you can grab it in a hurry. Next time it saves your ass from a huge mess, tell whoever is impressed with your improvisation in a crisis that your good friend Hudson told you that. :P

So, crisis averted. Spent ten mins not only sopping up this weird gas/oil brew, but keep looking at bike funny, because it has the runs.

Mess clean, I think of possible reasons for gas in the oil of such a great amount. Crack inside the engine? Maybe the floats and such in the carbs are /really/ fucked? Leaky piston seals? Divine intervention?

To see if it was a ’slow’ thing, or if the bike had actually run like this, i undid one of the nuts on the top of the radiator and swabbed a q-tip down inside to sample the residue. sure enough, whatever that brew was had been flushed through the entire system.

Wait..flushed. That wasn’t gas, it was diesel. I proceed to check my thought with old experienced tool guy next door. He confirms it.

Dirty mechanic trick: to better flush the oil out of an engine, and therefor, get a cleaner engine, you can mix in a amount of diesel into the oil to thin it out. you can’t run the engine very long like that, obviously, it will wear and tear, but a few moments on an idle RPM speeds this stuff through the engine and helps break down and scrub away oil crap and grime inside the engine like crazy.

I did it once on chainsaw engines and gokarts when i was a kid, thats why this smell was so oddly familiar. Never thought anybody ever did it with motorcycles too, at least nobody I’ve ever worked with did it that way.

So, Here we file another ‘WTF?’, why the hell, would somebody sell a bike, in the middle of an oil flush and not mention it?! why is the airfilter so damn new, and the carbs so untouched?!

Then it hits me..I know what happened. I have a CSI-like moment of resolution where the facts all fall into place. Previous owner has bike problem. Wreck, lay down, engine stalls, whatever. He takes bike to shop. Shop proceeds to rack up the bills on him, (the bike shops around here are fucking horrible, they really fuck people off.), doing this, needing that, finding this that and the other thing. at some point, guy says ‘enough, forget it, just let me pay you for what you did so far.’, and they take it very literally. they hand him the bike back, mid maintenance, without telling him a damn thing. the bike probably runs okay for a while, but then makes a steady downhill slump in performance and behavior as the oil gets thinner and thinner.

Guy was giving up on bike anyway, he went and got a hog instead. :P

He sells it, still not knowing WTF was going on, probably assuming seriously massive engine problems.

But this all narrows down to one, final, looming question…IS there serious engine problems? Did it kill itself in that last few runs on thinned out oil?

I really hesitated at this part. I could make the problem worse by trying, but then how much worse can you get? If the engine is hammered, its hammered, nothing you can do if you don’t know but to try it. so i throw in the oil, 4 quarts..which..isn’t enough. shit.

Send the guys out to get more. Ends up taking 6 total, okay, good. Now we are all full and ready to go. I gas up the tank, I check the battery..Hmm, it seems to have a charge now.

Out come the keys. at this point, all the flatmates who have been filled in on the days discoveries are standing there. It’s like a great big moment of truth, will it start or won’t it?

I straddle the sleeping beast, stick in the key, flip the switch and put my thumb on the magic button. We pulled the headlight fuse to save amps on the battery, just in case it was a little weak in the legs. One..two..three..push!

And not a damn thing. The console lights didn’t even dim. I dick around, check my switches, make sure things are where they should be. try again..nothing.

Hmm, well if the starter isn’t even *trying*, then something is wrong other then the engine itself..

This is where I hemmed and hawed to myself, wandering around the driveway and court while smoking about half a pack while trying to recall every little tidbit I could remember about katana’s. And really wishing the clymer manual I ordered was here already to maybe offer some insight.

Then I had a curious idea. Starter, gokarts, chainsaws. Hey, the starters on bikes are basically like the electric push starts on ATV’s, which basically hook right into the drive system. It’s like starting a lawn mower with a power drill, in fact, it’s just like it.

I guess I had complicated it in my head and misdeed it entirely. So on the bike I go. I fumble through some gears, or at least try to, they don’t feel right, the lever isn’t moving as far as it should, feels like the thing might be jammed up inside the gearbox.

Curious idea number two, what about a push start? I’v push started bikes before, its dirty, but it works. I ask flatmate of the big and hefty sort ‘Hey, give me a push, straight that way. I’m going to count to three, and then brace yourself, the bike might lock the tire.’

He steps in and starts pushing like mad. I wait, and then throw it into gear, and sure enough, with the familiar THUNK of a gear catching, the bike starts to roll with itself in gear. I hear pistons compressing and Suddenly everything sounds just like a bike should rolling with its engine off. i know most people can’t place things by sound, but I got the best ears money can buy, ask my parents, they forked the bill when I was a kid. ;)
Not quite the moment of glory I was hoping for with the first start attempt, but this sure sounds better than I had hoped.

We ended up pushing it right back into the garage after that trick, and i requested of the flatmate ‘hey, don’t forget to make the engine noises!’ He kindly obliged my childish ways while I swang my legs off to the side and make other stupid noises. The neighbors were greatly amused from the looks of it.

Moment of truth take two. We all stand in the garage again (not sure why, I didn’t call them in or anything, maybe its a sixth sense type of thing). In goes the key, in goes the held breath. Push of the thumb, and sure as hell, we hear a starter crank.

I think i wet myself. Just a little, Teeny tiny bit right there.

I put it on choke and adjust the fuel a little, and then give it a REAL try.

The fucking thing started on the second crank, and it /stayed/ started too.

Now I *KNOW* I wet myself right then and there. Thats just unheard of. Maybe we jogged the engine a little with our push run, maybe the oil/diesel mix kept the engine nice and primed.

Maybe the damn thing just likes having somebody take care of it a little. :)

I gave it a few mins of idle time, but noticed that the throttle would drown it. It stays up, but it doesn’t want to. I kill it for the time being and wait to see somebody who shall be reffered to as the ‘black cat’ to return a message to me. This black cat has owned several Katana’s fairly recently, and is more familiar with them than myself.

I double check a few things, ask about our oil levels and type, everything was right on. I explain what was gong on with the engine, and the fact that it cranked up with little fuss after four years of rotting in a corner. (he sounded impressed. And I blew a load in my pants again just thinking about it. :P)

Then he reminds me, the kat’s are /oil cooled bikes/, obviously, but as such, they run real, real cold. It takes them forever and a week to ‘warm up’, unlike other bikes I’m more used to, you have to give them a little love in the mornings, and I’d say a four year nap would make one hell of a morning.

Armed with confirmation and some added insight, I babyed the engine for a while that night, letting it work its legs a little. Each time it runs, it sounds smoother and better behaved, and its starting to idle at the proper RPM’s now.

Threw a small splash of octane booster in the tank, and some cleaner treatment, (not much, just a splash), and let it sit overnight. For tomorrow, I tackle an entirely new beast, one which will require the engine to run for at least half an hour. what is it you ask? what will I be detailing to you next?

RUST. How to take an old exhaust rig with rust problems and make it look presentable again. Don’t think it can be done? Guess again, buddy!