Dr Jon

Are you saying that when you spin it over and spray WD40 into the carbs you get nothing at all, not even a backfire? If so the starter motor would have to be taking all the power and leaving none for sparks when spinning against compression. It shouldn't matter if your carbs are knackered, if you've got sparks in the cylinder and are spraying WD40 into the back of the carbs then you should at least get some attempt to fire. If it fires on a few cylinders and then dies immediately then you are firing the cylinders in the right order and you have a fuel problem. If it just backfires in the exhaust then you are firing the cylinders in the wrong order. If you get absolutely nothing then you do not have sparks in the cylinder. Get hold of some proper Easy Start, you can usually find it in a petrol station. Add some jump leads from a car battery or booster to your battery and spin it over again while spraying Easy Start into the airbox. If this doesn't even give you a few backfires then there is no way you have sparks in the cylinders. One other thought, when you spin the motor and open the throttle check the slides are actually moving up in the throttles bodies. You can see this through the airbox if you take the filter out. Can't imagine why all diaphragms would fail to lift but might be worth checking.

Make sure the vacuum connection on the top of carb 3 is blocked off if you're not using it to run the vacuum tap otherwise you'll have an air leak. Connect the LT wires as you had them when you got backfiring in the exhaust. Get the moto spinning and spray WD40 into the airbox as it's spinning (no choke). See if you can get it backfiring again like that. If so, then swap the LT leads again and do the same thing, see if it will try to fire any better. The fact that you have good sparks on all plugs means that your wiring is all working so the problem is more likely to be sparks at the wrong time or just a lack of fuel. If your sparks are at the right time it will fire on the WD40 regardless of the carbs. Even with a totally worn out engine it should at least try to fire up like this even if it ends up running like a bag of crap. Try this and let us know what happens. Don't get too carried away with huge amounts of WD40 into the airbox, just a good squirt every now and again while it's spinning.

Hi motovalet, If it's backfiring through the exhaust your ignition timing is wrong one way or another, nothing to do with the moto. Try swapping low tension wires around on your coils. Leave the orange ones as they are (these are common power feeds), just swap the other two and see what happens. It sounds very much like ignition timing, (definitely nothing to do with your valves or cam timing!). These engines can be buggers to start from dry float bowls at the best of times, they need to get going on a couple of cylcinders to start pulling petrol through which is probably why your plugs are coming out dry. Try swapping those LT leads first and see what happens, if not you need to start looking at ECU and trigger wiring and make sure the static timing is set up properly. Don't put fuel directly down the plug holes, that is a recipe for a bent conrod, this is not a 125 two stroke from the seventies :-). Just get the moto spinning with the choke off and spray some WD40 or easy start into the airbox. (and that's only as a last resort, this is not good practice!!). Make sure your battery is really well charged, spinning for a long time will pull the power away from the coils to the starter motor. Spin her over with some jump leads from a car battery to help if you think the battery is getting a bit tired.

Sounds very much like a bad connection somewhere, either feed or earth, If it spins over well when you short the starter solenoid then the battery is probably ok. My bet would be a dirty fuse connection. Go through the fuse box and pull them out one by one and clean them all up with some emery cloth. If not then I would next check the block connectors to the ignition switch, if it's running then dies when you put on the lights etc. then a bad connection somewhere is taking the power from the ignition to force it's way through the dodgy load. Pull all connections and clean them up with some WD40 (proper switch cleaner is better but WD40 is easier to get hold of). p.s. you can buy a multi-meter for less than a tenner from any car spares shop, good investment. Buy one with some instructions and learn how to use it, this will make your life much easier :-)

One trick is to weld some large nuts onto the rounded heads, the heat helps free the threads and you have the larger nuts to give more torgue when you undo them. Whatever you try, if you do get them moving only undo them a tiny bit at a time and work them out slowly, out a bit then back in a bit then out again etc. be very patient when you do this and hopefully you won't destroy the threads in the head as they come out. If not just grind the heads off nice and flat and drill them out and fit a helicoil, easy enough to do and kits are very cheap. Just be very careful you don't drill in too deep. There are oil feeds behind some of those holes and it's all too easy to drill into them. I speak from unfortunate experience!

Hello yellow, Can you describe the running problems in more detail? Your compression test is excellent so i doubt there's much serious wrong with the moto. You say the bike is all standard, does this include jets/needles etc? I gather from a previous thread it stood for a while? Was it running well before it was parked up? Does it fire up quickly when you spin it over? Will it tick over or run at low revs with careful throttle control? Does it run well at particular throttle openings, i.e. ok at low revs but misses as you open it up? Pay very close attention to how wide the throttle is open when it begins to run badly, this is very informative. Different throttle openings relate to different jets. You mentioned popping through the exhaust. You need to supply more detail, is this when you are trying to start it or when revving it hard? These symptoms could easily be ignition based not fuel. If you can get it to start then quickly (and carefully) feel the downpipes and see if they are all warming up. Once they are hot spit on your finger and wipe it on each pipe. Notice how quickly the spit burns off, this will show if you have problems on individual cylinders. If you have problems on pairs 1+4 or 2+3 then this shows you definitely have ignition problems, most likely but not definitely a coil. The ECU can fail on a single pair too. You mention a rattle. When we say rattle we mean a higher pitch kind of sound such as is made by a loose chain or small pieces of metal tapping such as wide valve clearences. When valves and seats wear on these engines they get quieter not louder, they wear up into the head and close the gap. Valve clearances are very critical on B12 but only in fine tuning. They would need to have closed up enough to have caused a significant loss of compression which you know is not the case. To be wide enough to cause serious running problems i would think either a tappet locknut had come loose or snapped a rocker which would be seriously rattly. Carbs out of balance do not cause rattles they cause a much lower pitch knocking from the bottom end on tickover, this because the irregular firing pulses cause the clutch basket to shake. Very common on these motors (GSXRs and Fs anyway). Carbs out of balance are unlikely to cause serious running problems, again just fine tuning. If they're far enough apart to cause missing or backfiring they need repairing not balancing. Check the carb diaphragms, easy way is to take air box off and just lift the slides one at a time with your finger and watch how quickly they come back down. Absolute speed isn't important it's the comparison between carbs, any differences will show up problems. The diaphragms can come loose where they join the slides which will cause serious imbalance and running problems. I'm assuming you've checked the bleeding obvious, plenty of petrol flows from the tap. The fuel pipes don't squash up awkwardly when you fit the tank down onto the frame. The petrol is fresh and not full of rust and water. If it's got an inline fuel filter added to it this shifts fuel ok and isn't gettin airlocked. You removed all HT caps, cut back the leads a little and refitted them so contact between HT and plug caps is good. Plugs all in good condition, clean and gapped correctly etc. etc. It's really difficult diagnosing at a distance but if you can give some very specific details about the symptoms we will stand a better chance. It all comes down to logic in the end, though that logic can be pretty fkin tortured sometimes!

Great to hear you got the clutch working, bugger about the threads though. At least they're at the top so hopefully they'll stay oil tight enough to let you run the motor up and get an idea of how good it is.I reckon you'll be ok with the cooler, I managed to make the 1100f one fit on mine and that's loads bigger than the 600 one. You have to take care with the angle it comes down at, though too close to the engine and it will be close to the headers but too far away and it will be too close to the front mudguard under fork compression, it needs to be just right. I made up some little extending brackets which the original cooler mounts bolt on to and hold the cooler out at just the right angle at the bottom and just used some spacers and longer bolts at the top mounts to move the cooler forward about half an inch or so at the top. My fittings aren't brilliant to be honest but they work, I might get round to improving them one day. I'm away from home at the moment but could post some better pictures of them sometime over the weekend if that might be useful. Are you sure the carbs and rubbers match in size, they can be very tight anyway but just be sure you're not trying to cram 36mm carbs into 34mm rubbers. Just measure across the faces with a ruler. If they should fit then try warming the rubbers up with a hairdryer until they soften, they're always pretty tight even when they're the right size but should go in easy enough if you warm them up a bit. Stick with it, you're getting there.

Hi VJ, no I still haven't got round to modifying the cross brace at the back of the tank. I think you're right that it doesn't need it for frame support but there is quite a lot of stress put through the bottom of the tank when it's full of petrol. Luckily the monster motor means that it's never full of petrol for long anyway! While I'm writing, I might just take the opportunity to tell the readers, my shabby old teapot now does 110 mph in second gear before hitting the rev limiter. Hahahah, fukinhell, I really need some better brakes! Easy 135mph without hitting the limiter in 3rd. I'm still just short shifting from there up to top so have no idea what the top speed would be, I'm a bit scared to push it much beyond 145ish. Definitely not properly stable when shutting back down from there, I need to go back to the original low screen, the touring screen is flexing badly at that speed and I need to fix some of my fairing mounts which is not helping. I'm not going to win any races round the bends but by fuck it's quick in a straight line, roll on summer and the German Autobahns.

Hi Motovalet, great to hear you managed to get the moto in by yourself, bet that wasn't much fun. Sorry to hear of the clutch woes. Hadn't realised that model GSXR was so different to the teapot or 1100 motors. It sounds like you might possibly have misaligned the actuator shaft as you replaced the clutch cover, the splines on the shaft as they sit in the cover itself have to line up properly with the operating rack in the clutch basket. Normally you would get this lined up as you refit the cover then after that fit the arm at the correct angle. I can see that because you have to fit the arm with the cover off you could easily end up with the wrong relationship between them. I think you will either have to just keep buggering around until you get it right or undo the front engine mounts and tip the moto forward enough to give yourself clearance to fit the cover properly and then fit the arm. Bit of a pain either way! Good luck, stick at it you'll get there in the end. You also mention that you have practically no room for adjustment at the bottom end of the cable because the adjuster is hitting the frame. Depends which way you need to adjust but you can gain adjustment by added spacers at the clutch lever end, i.e. if you need to take up some slack you can just put a longer adjuster into the lever mount. If you need more slack than you can unwind some of the cable outer to give more inner slack. Hopefully you can adjust things near enough like this and get the fine adjustment right with the level adjustment.

Yes, need to remember that the total diameter of the back wheel and tyre needs to be considered when comparing drive ratios from engine donor bikes to their new homes. I'm running 15:45 on my 1127 motor in a 600 teapot with a 150-70 17 tyre. 70mph is about 4750 rpm in top, 100mph just under 7000 rpm and it will easily do 135mph in 3rd at about 11000 rpm. Not sure where it would top out but a long way the other side of 150 anyway. General riding is very civilised with this gearing, no need to go anywhere near the real power if you don't want and still be getting up to 100mph or so. Ballistic acceleration when you do want to play. Feels like the perfect gearing, i went up one from 14 to 15 on the front and it does feel better. Standard gearing on the 1100f is 15:52.

Don't know about bandits really but 750F downpipes will fit the 600 bandit engine for sure. Don't suppose the bandit frame cradle is much different to the teapot's so they should ok.

Haha, yeh reckon I that's what I expected to hear. Actually Vizman, if you're getting 3000 miled out of a back tyre you should be ashamed of yourself, must be riding in the rain or something keeping the rubber cool :-) Gixer1460....."melted on the dyno", hahafukinell, that's the way, that kudos is worth the price of a new back tyre any day of the week. My 1000RX broke the chain driving the flywheel on the dyno at the Builth Bike show once, classic. Mind you, the bike wasn't that powerful, his chain must have been on its last legs but still looked pretty good standing round telling everyone how my scabby mattblack scumbag bike just broke the dyno, ha.

Yeh, you can definitely re-use the cam cover gasket, just be a careful when you take it off that it's not stuck to both sides and ease the half-moon seals on the ends of the camcover out carefully. Be a lot easier with the engine out anyway to make sure it comes off cleanly. Make sure the rubber is nicely in the groove in the camcover all round when you put it back on and it'll be fine. Be careful not to overtighten the cam cover bolts when you put them back in, they've got a shoulder which sets the limit to how far they go in and you don't want to overtighten against this or you'll strip the threads. Apart from that it's all a doddle. When you do the carbs pay attention to how well the diaphragms are joined to the slides, an air-leak here will make it run really out of balance and rough, quickest way to check is lift the slides up with your finger when the carbs are off and note how long it takes to come back down, any noticeable differences here will suggest a leak in a diaphragm somewhere, the slides should shut nice and crisply but not snap shut too hard, the main thing to look for are differences between carbs. Give us a shout if the weather forecast is good and you want a hand to chuck the motor in, we'll come over for a spin. It's only a 10 or 15 minute job to get the engine onto its two rear bolts if you've got some help. We're both working over in Germany for the last week of Jan but any time after that. Might be a long time before this bastard rain pisses off though.

Just curious, but how long do you turbo nutters get out of a back tyre? I'm guessing you must leave a line of black rubber behind you wherever you go, like a slug trail :-)) You probably all too busy laughing your heads off to give a shit how long your back tyre lasts, and anyway it's not like you'd ever need to buy a front tyre, don't touch the ground long enough to wear out, but I was just curious. Bet you can kill a good tyre in a 1000 miles of dry summer roads easy huh? If not, you should probably try a bit harder.

Hi Nick, that's you up in the Wirral then? Yeh the motor worked out pretty well as you can see from the above. Goes like fk but perfectly civilised at lower speeds, exactly what I was after and the bike's handling it no probs. I'm still a little wary of putting that much power through the 600 crappy steel swinging arm, never liked the chain adjusters on them anyway so will probably change it to something else in the near future, 1100F if it fits or 1200 bandit which I'm pretty sure would go straight in. Fair play you can see the mileage in the motor, I think the 80k miles on the 1100F is about right but even so this is a seriously tough motor and is running beautifully, a lot quieter than the 600 motor that just came out after a similar number of miles. All in all, I'm well chuffed, especially now I've fixed the carb leak and the mpg is looking loads better, there was also loose diaphragm in one of the carbs, the plastic rivets that hold the diaphragm to the slide were loose on one carb which would have been a massive air leak and rough running last time it was used but this was easy to spot. I've just sealed it up with araldite for now which seem to be holding it together with an airtight seal so all good for now. Definitely some 750F 38mm carbs on the wish list. As I say, I'll give it a freshen up sometime later. I'm quite happy to spend a few hundred quid on this motor now I know it's all pretty sound, it'll go another 80k miles again easily. But will have to wait for later this year when I've got some cash but as it is for my £250 half of the price and my old 600 engine I've got a serious upgrade. Owen's pretty chuffed with his £250s worth too, got the rest of the rolling chassis and my old engine and carbs to build his streetfighter. He'll be making a start in a few week's time so we'll probably post some pics as he goes along. Motovalet, I know Gloucestershire fairly well, I lived and worked in Tewksbury for a while back at the end of the 80s. We're not so far away, we're in Builth Wells so if you do want a hand in a few weeks' time to get the motor in drop me a PM. Especially if the weather's good, make a nice excuse for a ride out on the bikes.