The Importance of a “break in” period. (Red)

When I completed Red, it was very tempting to just jump on and head for a long weekend trip. I had even considered riding to a rally in PA on it. I have gone through this bike from front to back and gosh darn it, I know everything is right. Right? Well no.

Keeping Red close to home during an initial break in period has proven to be a good idea. I have ridden it regularly since completing it, building more trust in it each day. After a few dozen miles, I rechecked many of the bolts and nuts, finding a few that had worked a bit loose. The fairing was still a bit rattly, so some work to tweak its fit was needed. I am also still tweaking with the carbs to get the idle right as it’s too high.

At just over 300 miles, I have encountered the first real issue. When riding to a work event, the whole bike just went kaput. It died just as I was arriving, so I was able to simply push it into the parking lot like a kid with a flat on a bicycle. A few attempts to start it failed and I had to summon a U-Haul trailer to get it home. Once the embarrassment of the event wore off, I began troubleshooting.

The first issue was the optical sensor on the ignition system. This depends on two grub screws to hold a sensor trigger shield on the end of the alternator. In spite of my many checks of all the nuts and bolts for torque during the build, I never fully set these grub screws. They need a bit of Lactite to keep them in and they each backed out enough to lose the timing. Hey, that might also explain the somewhat high idle, since the advance may hav also shifted a little over time. Good news is that I did not lose either screw.

The second issue seems to be the starter. It is not engaging the flywheel, even though it’s spinning on start. I pulled it out (not a simple task) and bench tested it using an old battery. Oddly, the bench test was fine. the solenoid and starter appear to work fine. EME was excellent and sent a replacement starter which solved that issue.

So, now that I’ve got it all sorted, it should get to it’s 500 mile break-in service before winter storage.