HELP, cant get it to start for the life of me

[Dann]

I'm looking it up right now but after I cleaned her al up a bit and started her again she sounded a little funny (like a dry slight clanking noise from the bottom of the motor) I shut it off and noticed the left exhaust pipe is cold and the right one is hot. I'm going to assume the left cylinder is not working. This was the same cylinder I adjusted the float to stop the gas leak. I think maybe I adjusted it to much and now it just remains closed I will work on measuring the floats and trying again tonight

 

[Brassneck]

Yep, time to get the carbs cleaned, and tune them up...careful with the floats, bending the tab too much/too hard can break it.

 

[figure8]

Great news man! Anything is possible, capacitors can go bad. Have you tried running with just the cap yet?
While your at it recheck all your wiring, one of the coils may not be firing. An easy check is to swap the plug wires to the opposite spark plug and see if the problem occurs the same on the other side. If you get the same result, then it's either bad wiring, bad coil, or bad spark plug. That's not say to it's not carb related, but it's easier to do that check before pulling carbs.

 

[grizld1]

The stock XS650 motor is a 360* twin; meaning that while one piston is on the power stroke with valves closed, the other is on the intake stroke with a valve open. So--what happens if you just move a plug wire on a breaker point 2-coil system in which each coil fires every 720* from one cylinder to the other? That's right--if you had power before you'll get maybe a pop, otherwise nothing. If you're going to do that inspection, you need to switch points wires as well.

Check your oil for gas, and if you smell gas in it, change the oil. Check your coils for resistance by probing the primary terminals with your ohm meter (the + terminal is a red/white wire, the - terminal is brown on one coil and grey on the other). Refer to the manual for specs (remember that link?). For procedures on your carburetors, go to the Tech section and find the link to the XS-650 Garage USA Carb Guide. 5twins and I didn't write that thing just so we could write it again, over and over, one piece at a time.

 

[Dann]

The stock XS650 motor is a 360* twin; meaning that while one piston is on the power stroke with valves closed, the other is on the intake stroke with a valve open. So--what happens if you just move a plug wire on a breaker point 2-coil system in which each coil fires every 720* from one cylinder to the other? That's right--if you had power before you'll get maybe a pop, otherwise nothing. If you're going to do that inspection, you need to switch points wires as well.

Check your oil for gas, and if you smell gas in it, change the oil. Check your coils for resistance by probing the primary terminals with your ohm meter (the + terminal is a red/white wire, the - terminal is brown on one coil and grey on the other). Refer to the manual for specs (remember that link?). For procedures on your carburetors, go to the Tech section and find the link to the XS-650 Garage USA Carb Guide. 5twins and I didn't write that thing just so we could write it again, over and over, one piece at a time.

I got some time tonight to do some work on it and here's what I have so far.

I first smelled the oil. It did not smell like gas so I decided to not replace it for now (I plan to once I get it running well again) I went to the tech section of this forum and got the float specs. 24mm +- 1mm and adjusted to the best of my ability. Once I adjusted the floats I went and fixed the leak from the petcock. I then tried to kick it. It started still but only one cylinder was getting hot. I then checked for spark on the left cylinfer and found that it was not sparking. I hooked up a multi meter to the points ignition and saw voltage from both sides leaving me to believe that either the coil is bad. I took apart he coil and noticed the wires might not have been connected all the way through the coil so I adjusted and got spark. Put it back together and got both cylinders firing.

I felt some kickback when I kicked it that last time. It was the first time I ever had it kick back on me so hard. It hurt. I looked around on the forums here and seen other people having this issue when the timing is off. I went and attempted to set the timing to find out the rotor plate I have had no timing marks....... DAMN so I pulled the plug and shined a flashlight through and kept rotating the motor until I found TDC (I assume based on more threads that TDC is when the piston (I think) reaches the top and no longer goes up and starts going back down. Once I got it in its upmost position I drew a black line on the rotor and called that TDC. I was completely lost though through the timing process.

If I understand correctly there are two marks on the bottom of the rotor housing. One that is completely south and one that is just a tad to the left of that (these markings were on the rotor housing already. I just had to find TDC. I then rotated the points to the greatest opening for each and gapped them to .014 (heard its supposed to be between .012 and .016) I then moved the TDC line in between the two markings and hooked my multimeter to read voltage. I was lost here. According to the directions I should be able to rotate the entire points plate by loosening the two larger screw and move the plate enough to lose voltage right when TDC is between the two lines. My voltage never dropped in this area. My TDC mark went past (to the right) of the right most line before the multimeter lost voltage. No matter which way I moved the points plate I could not get it to be in the spec I had read on so I gave up.

I put it back together and kicked it again. No resistance this time and both cylinders were firing smooth. I will move onto fine tuning and balancing the carbs another day. If anyone has tips on what I maybe doing wrong on the timing adjustment please let me know. I'll look into it more throughout the week.

Thanks