Happy to hear you got it running!

It might have dirty carburetors causing the idle issue.. sounds like it's running lean if you have to keep the choke on to stay idling. Might want to try adding a can of good fuel system cleaner to the tank and see if it improves after running the fuel through.

It's a pretty easy bike to ride in comparison to the newer sport bikes.. the lower seat height helps in addition to it being pretty forgiving handling-wise.

 

I told him to get some fuel line cleaner on a full tank of gas the next time he's out. We had her running great last night - flodded at first - there was a ton of gas coming out of the overflow, but slowly as I backed off the idle it became better. Few shots of gas and 45 mins later I had the shed like a bomb, but she was purring like a kitten.

He told me he went to try it this morning and she started first try, so I guess I have her at the sweet spot. Took me a good 45 mins to an hr to settle on it. Sometimes it takes a while for the RPMs to drop after a few shots, and if you don't give it a few shots of gas, yo don't even know if the turn on the idle screw made any difference!

I'll remind him on the fuel line cleaner - I run it in my bike once a year + a small engine tunup stuff once or twice. My carb is hell to get at and you need a crowbar to even get it out of there, so the longer I can go without having to remove it - the better!

I've also ran a proportioned amount of flush you use in cars/trucks for an oil change - probably a thrid of the bottle and I found it makes a great difference when doing oil changes. Have you folks ever done that? I do that, change the filter, and add a bit of wynn's engine stopleak b/c when I first got the bike there was dry, but slight seeping at the bottom. Since I've started this she's been perfectly fine.

He said he will be doing an oil change soon and I wanted to know if that would be all good recommendations.

 

That all sounds pretty much spot on to me. I don't really have any other suggestions at this point, it sounds like you have a good understanding for working on bikes to me!

 

One more thing I noticed - When we had her running - we were running a car 12v battery. And when you would remove the terminals (my bike can run w/o battery for example) - after a bit she'd loose power and cut out. Is this normal? There was an extra ground that you would attach to the ground at the battery terminal, if i remember correctly it was b/c they mounted a new regulator and its coming from there (basically the ground wire comes out from the left side of the battery box from underneath - the CDI is further back for example. Is it a mixture of this, or does it require the battery to keep running somewhat.

If not, what would cause this?

 

It does need a battery installed the charging system isn't designed to run the bike without it. If that ground wire is from the regulator make sure it's hooked up also.. doesn't have to be to the battery you can also ground it on the frame, but it's important for the regulator to have a good ground.

 

Thanks! It's what I suspected at least!

Now I wish had more "pieces of junk" wiring stuff to practice on! This was the first time I got the chance to use my wire tracer for real, and the multimeter. I'm gonna have to post on the local classifieds see what turns up lol.

Thanks for the advice! Really appreciated!