Fast forward a few weeks to yesterday. I got the tins remounted, the electrical all tied in and was at last ready to try to start it. Initially it was all kick, kick, kick, nothing. Maybe the Sparx was bad, so I pulled the battery out of my Hinkley and ran some jumper wires to it, flipped the key to start, the neutral light came on, then to run and the headlight and tail came on, great at least I didn't screw up that wiring. Back to start, more kicking and nothing.
I decided to call Dieselchanic and we talked about a few idea and he mentioned maybe trying to hit the carb with some starter fluid and it worked sort of. After the initial spray I gave it a big kick and the engine roared to life and was pinned at max throttle. I can't even describe how fricking loud this was in the garage and I scrambled to find the key. Our first thought was the throttle was stuck open, but a quick twist quickly ruled that out as it snapped right back. Another spray, another kick with the same ear bleeding results. It was about this time the neighbor came over to complain about the noise.
Time for some new troubleshooting. Obviously the throttle was fully open and it wasn't until we pulled the cable off the throttle that we saw the problem. This is the first vm36 carb I've had so when we looked it inside we saw movement of the slide up and down, but we didn't know just how low it was supposed to go in the body. With the throttle removed we quickly realized that it was sitting a good half inch higher with tension then without it.
Now I'm kind of pissed because this was a custom cable from Motion Pro that I spent weeks waiting for and but was assured it would be correct since I sent them my throttle tube to get the measurements right. After pulling the cap off the housing I was able to cut back the liner and reinstall the cap without having to remove the cable. With this problem fixed I buttoned everything up, opened the petcock and gave it a kick. The engine fired to life again, but at a much more reasonable level.
So now comes the dialing in to ride it. I have to get a timing light to get still, but have the challenge of doing it without a tach, hopefully I can get close. Second, it looks like the clutch it stuck since as soon as I put it in first the bike cuts out. I'm going to try to crack it open with the front tire against the wall and some rpms in first. Hopefully this will work.
Overall I'm really pleased that we were able to get the bike running yesterday, both cylinders are firing and even though it's not timed it seems to idle pretty decent. I had no idea if it would happen and actually pretty much assumed it wouldn't. Full pictures of the finished bike soon to follow once I actually get it out in the sun. In the mean time I'm going to try to get video linked to it being fired up on youtube, but if you are interested you can see it in my instagram.
Oh on a side note. The Sparx worked just fine, turns out the problem with that the diagram they send is for British bikes that use a positive ground which always seemed weird to me when I was connecting it. As soon as I swapped the connections everything turned on just fine with the bike running.