Mech

If the number is there, I\m pretty sure it's on the left side.. But this is depending on thirty year plus old memories..

I wouldn't know about that but a brake specialist can likely get you new pistons and seals to overhaul the old ones.

I think from memory that some of the early models the frame number was stamped into the frame on a bottom chassis tube down under the motor, about under the crank, in a place where they got ground away.. If they were there they face out to the side. Give it a wire brush and if you can see something then use a knife or scraper to very carefully scrape over the numbers lightly till you can see an impression where they had been stamped.. Don't scrape too hard or you will wipe it all, but sometimes you can make out the slightly raised metal around the numbers. If you look up an online parts place and compare various years around the suspected year you may be able to narrow it down. Carbys change, headlights, body colour..

Gaskets change size slightly with changes of humidity. If you are having trouble getting them to fit nicely ou can make them fit the dowels and bolts better by either drying them in the sun, or holding them over a boiling kettle. But really.. throw that gasket away and use loctite master gasket.. It's brilliant. I don't know that sealer you're mentioning but I'm a mechanic, a self employed mech in the country, far from supplies, and I don't use anything but loctite. It doesn't harden till it's clamped which is really handy if you get held up half way through an assembly job, it wipes off the outside cleanly, the excess inside dissolves into the oil without any bad effects (unlike silicon !), it never hardens in the tube on the shelf, and it's good for air, fuel, oil, water, high temperatures, pressure, and it fills gaps up to thirteen though, which is about the thickness of a postcard or thin gasket. Most motorbike, and auto, and heavy machinery work I do, and I've been doing it for fifty years, I dispense with the paper gaskets altogether. Crankcases don't have gaskets, and you don't need them on side covers either.. You never need a gasket again(other than head gaskets).. Try it, you will like it !

As you were.. I checked in a manual and the oil restrictor is in the other side case. Loctite master gasket is still the stuff to use though.. It doesn't harden till you clamp the parts together, which means you don't have to hurry.. another of it's advantages. It's brilliant stuff. Silicon is terrible stuff.. except perhaps.. oh I don't know.. fitting windows into a caravan say !

I'm pretty sure that in the crankcase where you are working there's an oil gallery, and in that gallery there's a little metal oil restrictor. Make sure that restrictor is there and clean. It can be taken out I think. Silicon would block that restrictor up real easy and it would be a disaster..

i never use silicon. Bits of it that squeeze out when you tighten it up can come off and block filters.. Use loctite master gasket. It's clean to use and you only need a very small amount so there's practically no squeeze out, and what there is, dissolves into the oil.. haha.. that's ok though, it does no harm.. And I'm glad to realise I misread what you'd written.. I thought the bike shop had put the filter in backwards.. Me bad.

Those circlips are common to lots of machinery and you will be able to get one from any engineering supply shop, or auto repair shop probably.

Ha.. Yeah.. give me mud any day..

Probably a good idea to check the charging system too.. If there's a fault with the battery or the regulator, the charging can put such a big load on the engine that they feel like they are seizing once the revs get up.

Other than that, check the aircleaner isn't super dirty, or the exhaust blocked.

I'd check that both the throttle butterfly and the slide were moving together and if they are right, then I'd be stripping the carb and cleaning it and checking the float level.

You buggers and your snow ! You all sound as if you love it ! I've only been near it once in my life.. and vowed never to go near it again..

To see if it's going to start you take the spark plug out and check if it's got spark. If it has then you put petrol in, apply the choke and try to start it. If it starts then warm it up and try driving it and check the running. If it doesn't start after a few minutes of trying, then you take the spark plug out again and see if it's wet or dry. If it's dry then you need to check fuel's getting to the carby, by loosening the drain bung at the bottom of the carby if it has one, or pulling the fuel pipe off the carby and checking fuel's getting that far. If the spark plug\s wet but it didn't start then turn the choke off and have another go at trying it. If it still doesn't start, turn the fuel tap off and keep trying to start it. If it doesn't start after a few minutes of trying then pull the spark plug again and check again whether it is wet or dry, and if it still has spark. If it tries to start after a bit of cranking with the choke and the fuel tap off, then it probably needs a bit of careful juggling of the throttle, and trying the fuel tap on and then off till it catches and gains revs.. Just keep on checking if the plugs getting fuel, and that it's not soaked in fuel, and turning the fuel and choke on or off depending on how it is. When they haven't been going for a while you often have to carefully coax them into life with careful throttle application, generally just giving them small amounts of throttle till they start to try and run, then holding the throttle at that position till it clears itself and revs up. Let us know how you get on with those two checks, (spark and fuel), and we can talk you through what to do next.

Have a look at the service manuals and if the one manual does both years then the two bikes will be very similar, but parts do always change as they make small improvements and modifications to cure faults that come to light. The best way to check if parts will interchange, especially without having to change several parts together, (like changing a gear, needing the later model gear shaft to suit it), is to find an online parts place that lets you see what other model the part you look up fits. Often once you select a part online, they will tell you what other models they fit and the other part number(if there is one) if it's for the other model.

Nothing to be sorry about Caleb, we all have to keep on learning, me included, and I'm ancient ! Motors do run hot if they are too lean, but it's really only the main mixtures that will do it... or the ignition timing being too retarded.

The idle mixture screw only effects the idle running and won't make it run hot... A lean high speed mixture will though. And, not that it's really important, but for your information CalebM, the reason they run hot if lean isn't because fuel cools the motor, but because a lean mixture burns slowly and the flame has more time to heat the cylinder. The same's true of a retarded spark, the late ignition point means the fuel's still burning as the piston gets a long way down the cylinder and there is more opportunity for the heat to soak into the cylinder. It works the same way in a diesel if pushed.. the fuel being injected for longer means there's more time and area for the heat to soak in, or, what's normally noticed, the exhaust temp goes right up real fast.

Hi. It sounds like a fuel problem. If you throttle off a bit when it starts to die does it recover ? If/when you open the throttle, does it start to die immediately or does it pull for a few seconds before faltering ? How is it when you restart it after it's stalled ? I don't now about this snow business, but if ethanol fuel freezes or absorbs water from the air in cold weather then do as suggested and change the fuel. Probably the next easiest thing to do it first of all check that the fuel is flowing to the carby. Take the fuel hose off the carby and put it into a bottle and start the motor and check there is a good full flow of fuel coming through. If there is, then it probably needs the carby working on. Before pulling the carby off and to bits I'd use the drain bung on the bottom of the carby to drain the carby and I'd try to catch the fuel, or watch very carefully for any water coming out. Next I'd take the diaphragm cover off the top of the carby(it can be done in place), lift it and the slide it's attached to out and check the diaphragm doesn't have a tiny hole or tear in it, and at the same time check the needle that hangs down from the slide the diaphragm's attached to can't slide up and down in the slide. If all those things are ok it's probably time to take the carby off and strip and clean it.

The hub must be seized on the axle splines I'd think. Give it a squirt with crc, tap it a bit on the flange out near the studs to try and get it to rock just enough to let the crc creep down the splines, then try tapping it, or using a puller.

I wouldn't be too worried about that crack, we often see marks like that and they are just from the casting process. See it doesn't go all the way to that hole off to the side. If you want to verify it is a crack, wash it with a bit of petrol so some petrol gets a chance to soak into it, then wipe it dry with a cloth, then give it a light tap next to the crack while watching carefully. If it is a deep crack a bit of petrol will come up to the surface or out of the crack when you tap it. You could try using a bit of dirty petrol or kero if you have some.. It will show up better. No guarantee but that's pretty much the old fashioned way we check for cracks in things.. except we use a dye that shows up better. That broken off lug though could be the cause of your wear. I'd suspect those three lugs are to stop the bevel cut gears moving sideways when under load. Having one missing could allow the gear to angle over a bit and that would/could cause the clutch to slip or drag and wear where the center touches the sprags that operate as a one way clutch. Whoever did the overhaul must have been truly incompetent because putting the oil filter in backwards when changing it is warned against in the manuals. That, and the flywheel being loose would just about be enough to have me stripping it all down to check everything.. but I'm a mechanic and it's no big job for me.

On the slime bottle they claim it can fix the hole left by a four inch nail... I've only used it to seal rusty rim to tyre leaks though. There are various brands but the one called "Green Slime", seems the best.. It's thicker and gooier(if that's a word!)

If you look at the tyre valve it will be either metal, threaded, with a nut to prevent the tube pulling in, or an all rubber valve which is a tight fit in the rim's hole. The metal one is a tube. I'd imagine it was originally meant to have be tubeless. There is stuff they call "slime", that you buy in a bottle and put into tyres to stop slow leaks. The slow leak could be between the tyre and the rim, so you'd want to take the wheel off, take the tyre valve out, put the slime in and then the valve back in, inflate the tyre, and hold the wheel on it's sides and roll and flip it around so the slime gets right up the sides near the join between the rim and tyre. You need to roll and flip it around at the right speed and timing and angle to get the slime into the right place. It will be a bit of hit and miss to get it all the way around the the join so you need to take your time and work the slime around for a while. It would help to locate the leak before you do all that, to get the slime into the place it's needed, by putting the inflated tyre into a tub of water and looking for bubbles. If the leak's in the tread part of the tyre then it will seal itself when you ride the bike. A bottle of slime is about the same price as a new tube, but often a better option. Once it's in there it will seal any small leaks you may get in the future. Also, the rims that are made to be tubeless have the hole in the rim in a place that does not suit the tube's valve, with the result that if you do use a tube, they can easily get destroyed if the tyre does go even slightly too flat on a ride.

And a happy next year to you too Dave... I'm already in mine.. It seems ok... So far.

Well.. I see there's a wiring diagram for that thing in here.. And it looks like the coil does get a pulse from the ECU to fire the plug.. That feed out of the ECU's described as high voltage, which means CDI, probably about four hundred volts and a high current.. That wire could kill you so be careful. But that will only work with a feed into the ECU from both the fuse labeled Ign and the feed into the ECU labeled as Switched power, which comes from the kill switch.. and the right voltage in the from the tilt switch, which I see isn't battery voltage but between 0.8 and 3 volts. If the voltage going into the tilt switch is between 4 and 8 volts it thinks there's been a roll over. And I should mention that you shouldn't use a test light to check these circuits. The test light carries to much current and can destroy the electronics. You need a digital multimeter.. Even the current through an old fashioned analogue multimeter can fry things.

Ok so I had a read up and it seems likely this thing will be similar to a canam, and most of those do feed power through a main fuse and then an ignition fuse to the coil and the ECU shorts the coil to earth and controls the spark by turning the earth on or off.. Hope that helps.