New Member from Canada

fleyeboy · New Member Joined: May 02, 2006 Posts: 1

Greetings folks! Just purchase a 1979 XS 650 today as a project bike. Love these twins... getting tired of V twin this and V twin that. Anyway, priority 1 is to get the engine running. Last owner said it ran fine until one day he was on the highway and the engine just quit.. no noise just quit. He said he found out it was a "timing gear". Anyone know what involved here? Is it a "major" job, rebuild, or just a simple fix. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

thanks, Jeff

Wulf · Posted: June 8, 2006, 8:22 pm Post subject: Re: New Member from Canada

Hey guy, welcome to the board. Ditto on the v twin this and that. Three things to make any gas engine run.
1 Proper fuel/air mixture
2 Good spark at the right time
3 Good compression

Did the bike run out of gas? May sound stupid to ask but as a tech, you wouldn't believe the number of "no starts" I've worked on that were simply out of gas. If there is gas in the tank will switching the petcock to reserve get fuel flowing? Ok, assuming that you have lets say half a tank, do you have spark? Pull a plug and ground it out against the cylinder and spin the engine over. Also check for fuel fouling. If in doubt, go ahead and get a couple of spark plugs from the autoparts store. The dealer will charge an arm and a leg for the same plug. The likelyhood of poor compression is probably small, so you more than likely have an ignition issue. (assuming you have fuel again) Check it out and let us know what you find out.
Wulf

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