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Eric's Autos: FrankenHarley

Eric Peters on

For about a month now, I have been trying - like Dr. Frankenstein - to breath life into something inert: The cobbled-together corpse of what was - once - a 1980 Harley Davidson Sportster.

The derelict ironhead had been been left outside like a yard gnome for about four years. Its owner - my neighbor's son - wondered why it would not run. I watched him trying to get it to run on several occasions - the poor bike subjected to jumper cable-powered, run-the-starter-for-two-minutes straight attempts while spraying ether into the carb. I felt like Oskar Schindler. I just had to step in.

Used a tractor to drag the hulk across the grass from his place to mine - necessary because the rear caliper was frozen to the rotor and so were the bolts that held the caliper to the rotor. The tires were shot (dry-rotted) anyhow, so it seemed like the easiest thing to do. Some come-alongs wrapped around the handlebar and me in the saddle to guide the thing - kind of like tugs shepherding a doomed ship to the breakers only the Harley was going to get a second chance.

Once in the garage - the first time in decades, probably, that the bike had a roof over its head - I began the initial examination. More like an autopsy, really. There were multiple causes of death. First, the wiring harness. God help me.

In the name of "high performance" someone had taken to it with clippers - to eliminate "unneeded" things. Like the wires that connected the starter solenoid to the handlebar controls. You started the bike (well, tried to start it) by touching a loose hanging wire with an open connector to the positive terminal on the battery. No push-pull (or choke) cables. You levered the throttle by hand, hunched over so you could reach the carb - while probably someone else touched the dangling wire just mentioned to the battery's + terminal.

Meanwhile, the battery - I discovered - would be drained of all life if left hooked up because no matter what position the ignition key was in (including "off") there was always a draw on it. Like Frankenstein's neck electrodes, I quick-rigged a temporary solution: a cut-off switch for the negative terminal, using an old race car On/Off switch I had lying around. Now at least I could bump the motor over without having to constantly connect/reconnect the battery.

 

Well, I could bump it over once I bypassed the soul-glo starter wiring. I mounted a temporary push-button switch that bypassed the harness entirely. One wire to the solenoid, the other to the battery. Laugh all you want. It works as well as the factory system.

But getting the bike running was not going to happen - ether assisted or otherwise - without rodding out the carb. Years of sitting with ethanol-laced "gas" does peculiar things to early '80s-era carburetors never meant to drink alcohol. If you have dealt with this, you will know where I am going. In the bowl I found some greyish goo - and both the main and pilot jets completely occluded. Shoot all the ether you like down a bike's gullet, it ain't gonna run for very long without gas. It'll kick and buck and jerk like a heart attack victim on a defibrillator. That's all you'll get until the carb is clean and gas once again flows.

The Keihin was in bad shape. So I took it apart, put all the pieces in a nice warm bucket of parts cleaner and left them to de-crud for several days.

The main jet is big - easy to remove and easy to clean. The pilot jet is small - and not. The aeration holes on the side of the tube are extremely tiny and very hard to visually confirm as not-clogged. If you have less than very good eyes - and are not 100 percent, absolutely surethe thing is utterly clean - chuck it and replace it. Your bike will never start right or idle decently with a partially gunked up pilot jet. They are cheap - and most any Harley store should be able to get you a brand-new one in a couple of days. Same with other parts like the main jet, needle valve, accelerator pump piston (there's a rubber diaphragm that goes bad after a few years of ethanol bathing) plus the necessary gaskets and o rings.

...continued

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