WTF? I kept swapping clutch parts from a bike that worked and still couldn't get the bike to move on it's own power. Finally as I was about ready to give up, I remembered reading on SabMag about a clutch insulator. Now I hadn't even needed to remove the plastic cover on top of the clutch slave cyclinder on this bike, so I assumed it was ok. Turns out one of the previous owners must have taken the slave cylinder off and failed to replace the insulator. This kept the pressure plate from aplying full pressure to the clutch plates. As soon as I put the insulator from PB99 on PB98, I had power to the rear wheel.
Now maybe this bike is ready to start riding!
Sunday, October 24
The turn signals are kinda flaky, especially the left turn signal. I'll have to open it up and spray contact cleaner in there to see if I can clean them up.
Sunday, October 31
A new problem has surfaced. I'm unable to get the bike to start reliably. At first I thought that the battery had died, but then I put the battery in PB97 and it was fine. Next I tried swapping starter switches and starter solenoids. Still no luck. When I decided to swap starter motors, I got a
I searched my sabmag archives and found this:
On Thu, 3 Jun 1999, michael walt wrote: > My wife's 500 Interceptor has been having a recurring problem with gas seeping > into the oil. Since I already know the 1st rule of plumbing I can guess how it > gets there. I am ashamed to admit how much I paid the asshole stealer to > rebuild the carbs, which did not help in the slightest. The bike spent all > winter with the petcock shut off and a fresh oil change and there was still gas > in the oil this spring.I only observed this problem when I filled the gas tank completely full for the first time. I'm assuming that the *real* problem here is my vacuum operated fuel valve isn't closing, which allows gas to continue to flow til it overpowers the float valves, then it flows past the pistons into the crankcase.