Went to start the bike and immediately realized something had changed. She's been such a "soft start" since first running, with very easy compression and a quick and easy firing. Now, the kickstart was extremely heavy. I could barely get her to turn over.
When she did, she barely idled. I got her to idle for a minute or two on full choke, but without, she died almost instantly.
Again, foolishly thought this was still somehow related to the clutch and the work I'd done the previous today.
But lesson learned... took the rest of the day to truly ponder the problem and separate out the facts from my personal fiction.
It happened so fast on the shakedown run, but the fact was that the engine started to stall and when I pulled the clutch in nothing really happened. That's why I thought it was the clutch. But after the day's pondering, I realized that it seemed more like the piston was not moving freely anymore. It would explain both the problem in the shakedown as well as the hard start.
Went down in the afternoon and popped off the alternator cover and pulled the spark plug and turned the crank by hand. It moved silky smooth.
BUT... then with the spark plug back in, it got extremely hard to turn on the compression stroke. Bingo! The first gear runs must have started pushing the rings out.
Now I'm wondering if the combo of piston, jug and the new .25 oil ring are not working out after all. Maybe good enough to idle when not under load, but as soon as there was load the tolerances didn't work.
Almost positive now that that's the problem and the fix is simple: get the right piston/rings/jug. But easier said than done...
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