SIP Update

Well, I'm pretty bored with this whole Covid Shelter-In-Place thing. I don't have it quite as bad as some others- since I'm a healthcare worker, I need to go out and get to my job. But still, on my days off, I'm here at home trying to keep busy with whatever I can.

Today, I decided to get working again on Angie, my RD400. When I left off at the end of last season, I still needed to get the bike properly jetted. I messed around with a few carb configurations, but it actually resulted in killing the bike altogether. For about a week, I tried to get the motor to fire, but it was a done deal :(

I woke up early. Got some coffee in me and started picking at the bike. I hunted down the original carb configurations for when I had my first successful start and I figured I'd go from there. I swapped out the main jets from 280's back to 260's. I found that I had put in 27.5 pilot jets, so I returned them to 30's. I checked the needle position and the A/F mixture screw. I double-checked my plugs to make sure that I wasn't running 7's. I made sure they were gapped to 0.025-0.028". I wasn't entirely sure if which plug wires went to which plugs, so it was going to be a crapshoot. After a few unsuccessful attempts, the bike finally roared back to life! It ran hella smokey and the idle was high, but at least it was running again!

While I was tooling around the bike today, I also installed the aftermarket horn, although I didn't bother yet to clean and paint the mount.

Last year, when I put her to bed, I was thinking of doing to jetting myself, but now I think I'm over it. There's a shop in Martinez that can tune it in. I spoke with them last year. They had just finished doing an RZ350 and they were comfortable with 2-strokes. I think they quoted me around $500, which is pricey, but I just want it done correctly.

The majority of what still needs to get done is the jetting and the last parts of the electrical that I haven't been able to get working yet- the brake light and the turn signals. I found a small shop in Livermore that said they could hunt down the electrical problems. I'm in the home stretch!