Wanted to add a kill switch to Evie for easy startup. Got the spare handlebar switch, which had tested fine, hooked up only to find I'd screwed it on off kilter and had actually ended up melting the contacts.
So ended up just hooking it up to the big box switch.
Ran and fired up nicely. So now she's at least got a nice semi-permanent fuel and switch setup for garage starts.
Made up a new breather valve for Red so I wouldn't have to keep swapping Roxy's back and forth.
Drilled a pilot hole, then went in with the step bit.
Was kind of winging the whole thing given how I wasn't quite sure how the whole thing was even going to play out with the nozzle. But after drilling the hole out to the step bit's maximum diameter, I found that the threads of the nozzle were perfectly snug in the hole.
With some force, was able to get the nozzle to bite into the valve and then just secured it with a few turns.
Only thing was that the nozzle ended up being a bit skewed (not perfectly straight up and down). But good result for being almost an accidental success.
Saw that the early top end used the solid head gasket so swapped over to that for the sake of it.
Did the quick test of removing the air filter, putting my hand on the intake and then cranking a few times. Should get a handful of gas at that point, but not only was there no gas, there wasn't even any suction. Big clue, finally!
Then just walked it down. Removed the carb entirely and found that I had suction on the head itself.
But when I went to test the intake, discovered that I hadn't CUT A HOLE in the DIY gasket!!
Bone headed mistake, but at least problem solved.
As usual, as soon as I cut the hole and put everything back together, she literally started on second kick.
Straight pipe is loud and awesome! Almost too loud to leave it idling but sounds fantastic.
Decided to swap back to the orange (x-Red) jug to eliminate the unknown factor of the Flexhone jug. No issues on the swap itself but it didn't affect the compression at all.
Poured some oil down into the plug hole and got the compression to jump to 60.
First time lapping valves and was surprisingly straight forward.
The suction cup was fine on the larger intake valve, but would never successfully stick to the smaller exhaust valve. But just by keeping downward pressure on the valve while spinning, was able to get the lapping done.
Thought this was going to be the magic fix, but after getting the head back together, the psi hadn't budged at all and was still down at just 35.
So a pretty conclusive leak test on Evie's early head: gas drained in seconds.
On the carpet later that evening, it was easy to see just how cruddy and caked everything was. Removed both valves and gave them a good cleanup. Used fine grain to just clean up the edges of the valves. Will first see how it does with the leak test again then will decide whether a lapping is needed.
Update 10/19: Redid the leak test and found that while it was definitely improved, there was still a significant leak from the intake valve. So looks like some lapping is in order.
Unclear what caused the clutch to freeze up on the last ride, but to safe, decided to swap in the new but thinner disks (in case the two extra-thick ones were somehow the root cause).
After swapping everything over, had that same issue where the arm was very far out and was locked stiff, but with a slight push it "popped" right into place. It was now much closer to where the cable was held.
But why???
In rebuilding had also realized that the arms of the cotter pin were sticking out at right angles and so had bent them inward. Could that have been contributing to the issue the whole time??
