Safety First

My new helmet has arrived.

Tire Changing

Holy crap, who new this was going to be so hard. I'm not sure if it was because the tires that were on there had gotten stiff with age, but they were impossible to get off. I ended up, after hours of wrestling, cutting off the back one with a saws-all and an angle grinder. And don't get me started about those bead lock devices in the rear tire. I forgot to take a picture of those, sorry.

Here are some pics of the process. As you will see, the first thing that I had to do was construct some devices to help hold the bike upright while I tried to lift one end. Coming up with a proper lifting scheme took some time. At one point I had the bike tied to the ceiling of the garage until a rope broke and it nearly fell over.

As there was no way to put anything wide and flat under the frame (the exhaust being the lowest part), I was left jacking the bike up by a single point at the bottom of the engine. This meant that I needed another way of keeping the bike upright. This contraption above is what I came up with. The pic below shows the bike on the jack, help upright with my rig, with the front wheel removed.

The wheels were rusty inside, underneath the tires. Before I put the new tires on I cleaned them up a bit with a sanding screen and wire brush. I then painted on some rust converter. I also added new rim strips (there was no rim strip in the rear). I modified the rear rim strip, adding extra holes for the two rim lock devices (not pictured). I considered omitting these devices since they were difficult to install and probably unnecessary for street riding. But I got them in eventually.

And here is the rig on the front with the back wheel removed. It was far more precarious this way since the front wheel can turn.

Here is the tube that came out of the back wheel. It had 8 patches on it! I guess Gary must be an expert at changing tires.

And here it is with the new tires on, finally.

Choke

So far, the posts I've made showing the bike running have been only with the choke on. The choke is simply a mechanical door that restricts airflow through the carburetor. I've had a running theory that the problem might be partially related to the fact that I have had the air cleaners off of the bike. The air cleaners on this bike are fairly restrictive, they are oil soaked foam elements. Today I reinstalled them and tested. It now idles fine with the choke off. So I guess there isn't a problem. Nice!

First Test Drive

OK, so it's only in 1st gear and only in the driveway. But hey, it's a start.

Oil Filter

Before I ran the bike any more, I wanted to make sure that the oil filter was clean. This motorcycle doesn't have a disposable paper filter like is typical on a car. Instead it has a centrifugal type inside the crankcase. I disassembled and cleaned it out. Here are a some cleaned-up pics.

Now, when I took the crankcase cover off, it had a gasket on it that immediately self-destructed. I looked through the manual that came with the bike, a repair manual that I purchased, and several online sources, none of which indicated that the bike originally had a gasket there. It looks as though an earlier bike, the CL350 had one, but this bike should have had an o-ring only. During reassembly I used a wet stone to improve the surface and put in a new o-ring. I am going to test and see if that provides a sufficient seal. Just in case it does not, I have cut my own gasket from some gasket material. I didn't put it in, but I am hanging on to it just in case.

Does She Breath Fire?

So I went back into the carburetors and tried to figure out what went wrong, what caused them to leak fuel all over last night. I tore them apart and did a more aggressive overhaul than last time. I removed the jets and did a more thorough cleaning. I adjusted one of the floats. When I reassembled them and turned the fuel back on, one of them started leaking again out of an overflow vent. I tried a trick I read about online described as a "trail-side repair". They mentioned knocking on the side of the float bowl with a piece of wood to unstick a stuck float. This worked like a charm. Then I tried again to start the bike.Remember, it hasn't been started in 25 years.

1st Attempt to Start It Up

With the fuel system fairly well restored and with a few other initial items done (Marvel Mystery Oil in the top of the cylinders, new plugs gapped and installed, fresh oil, etc.) I decided it was time to try and fire up the bike. Now, there are still a lot of reasons why she might not run. But this is just for diagnostic purposes.

Title and Registration

Changing over the title and registering the bike turned out to be a bit tricky. But I finally got it taken care of. Since the bike is of sufficient age (more than 30 years old), I was able to register it as a collector's vehicle. This carries with it a few stipulations, including that it can only be driven to shows, club events, or occasional Sunday drives. But the upside is that it is now registered for life and does not require re-registration.

Additionally, rather than purchasing new collector's plates, I was able to use "restored plates". Basically I cleaned up the old green Washington plates that were already on the bike and am allowed to display those. Here is a web-blurred pic of the plate so that you can see the style that I mean.

One interesting note, the guy at the DOL told me, "I have some instructions for you." He told me that, if I get pulled over, for any reason, and a police officer runs my plates, no record will be returned. He told me that the bike plate is registered as "equipment". He showed me the actual number (and symbol) on the registration that they will need to run. He explained that some officers will be familiar with this procedure, some will not. Huh, it sounded odd, but I took him at his word.

Electrolysis Update

It worked! At least well enough. I let the process run for about 3 days, but it had pretty much run its course in 2. Here is another video of the process, well, in process (about 17 hours in):

Regrettably I forgot to take a good before shot. However, here is a picture of the inside of the lid that gives a pretty good indication of what the inside of the tank looked like.

As you can see, it was pretty well covered with rust. Here is a shot of the inside of the tank afterward. It isn't one smooth uniform color. There are still darker patches. But those darker patches don't really look like rust. Though I can't really say exactly what they are.

Not perfect, but a vast improvement. I will call this good enough.

Perhaps not perfect, but good enough for a 40+ year old bike. As additional precaution, I am adding a new petcock with new in-tank screen and new petcock screen. Plus I am going to add inline fuel filters which the bike did not have originally.

Here is what the electrolyte solution looked like when I changed it out half way through the process.

Possible Electrolysis Improvement

Initially, when I first powered up the circuit, I was seeing about a 4A current draw. But this dropped off significantly as the rust particles began to build up on the anode. If you think about it, I am trying to remove rust from a relatively large surface area and collect it on an anode with a relatively small surface area. Frequent cleaning of the anode will help. But I may also consider changing to a different anode with more surface area, perhaps a flat metal bar, or something with many branches like a tv aerial.

Because Science is Cool

After many attempts I finally got the old fuel out of the tank, or at least the bulk of it. The final solution that seemed to work was denatured alcohol. But to be fair, I'm not sure if the success should be attributed to that particular solvent or to the duration of soak. I let it soak for 3 or 4 days which is considerably longer than I allowed any of the previous solvents to work.

Now that the sticky mess is out of the tank, I can more easily attack the rust. There are many methods I could try for this step as well (including a repeat of the dryer method I tried earlier). But the method that sounded the most interesting was the use of electrolysis. I made a couple of videos that explain the basic setup that I am using for this.

As explained in the above videos, I used a sodium carbonate and water solution as my electrolyte and a regular 12V automotive battery charger as my power source. The initial current draw upon supplying power to this setup was about 4A, though it dropped off over time (which I will mention in a subsequent post). The electrolyte began to bubble almost immediately and a brownish foam formed at the mouth of the tank. Below is picture of the anode after about 7 hours. Remember a couple of things; 1. rust from the tank is transferred to the anode, and 2. this is just the beginning, the process will probably take days.

anode before electrolysis (for comparison)

anode after about 7 hours of electrolysis

Carb Cleaning - What I Did Wrong

So I just watched a video on carburetor cleaning. I see that I made several mistakes, including:

• There are several other jets I should probably have cleaned besides the main jets.
• I should probably have tried to remove the jets and soaked them. While I cleared the center hole on the main jets, they have holes along their sides that can only be accessed by removing them.
• I should not have used carb cleaner on the float bowl. It is corrosive to the seal. That could cost me the price of a rebuild kit on both carbs. We shall see.
• I checked the needle valve for free movement, but not the little spring pin that may be in the center of it.

I have not yet decided whether or not to crack them back open at this point to try and correct these oversights. I may wait and see if I need to or not. As I mentioned before, my guess is that I will need to do a proper rebuild at some point anyway. Perhaps it is time to try and source a repair manual for this bike.