Okay, I finally got my top end rebuild done and got the bike outside and tried starting it. I eventually got it to start but it took forever. Here's what I mean. The motor will turn over (doesn't sound like a dead battery), it will start a winding up sound progressively getting faster and the motor starts. Here is what I have done so far and what I have left to do.

1. Point gap has been checked and set to .018
2. Fuel has been verified to be getting to carb

I will be putting in new plugs tomorrow and checking compression rate. Anything else that I might be missing? Timing maybe?

Thanks

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Randy

Your carb might be a bit too lean on the iddle for easy start...

Patrick

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Flat Head Forever
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Try charging the battery. Sometimes my shovel will have enough juice to turn the motor,but not enough to send a spark

Thanks for the input guys. I found the problem. It was lack of compression on cylinder 1. I just happened to be wearing shorts when I was trying to crank the motor today and felt air escaping by my left leg. Put my hand down there while I was cranking it and sure enough the head gasket is not sealing on the 1st cylinder. I'm gonna pull off the heads again replace the gaskets with thinner ones, clean the heads where the gaskets lie to make sure nothing is causing a gap put it back together and try it again.

Whle I have everyone's attention let me ask all of you that have done a top end rebuild a question. How the hell did you guys get the two head bolts on snuggly closest to the rocker box? I have allen type head bolts and I can get 3 bolts on snuggly but I can't get the 4th one on. The damn frame is in the way. Any special tools you used to get in there and get them on snuggly or maybe tips.

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Randy

That's exactly why when I get my top end back from being machined, I WON'T be replacing the 12 point bolts with anything other than 12 point bolts. The only way I could get the rear insides out was to stick a closed boxed wrench through the side once the pushrods were out and out of the way. You might try a socket with a knuckle adapter. I have to ask though, how did you get them out in the first place?

Rich

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The original bolts that were in there were the acorn bolts with threaded studs. It took a lot of patients and manuevering to get it out.

I had to loosen the rocker box bolts a bit to move it slightly and get my open end wrench in to make short small turns.

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Randy

Second that.

In fact - to set the torque right, I put a boxed wrench on the head bolt, then slipped a flattened pipe over that wrench, and put another wrench in the other end of the pipe to hold the socket drive on my torque wrench. I arranged the wrench heads twelve inches apart, center to center, then divided the torque by two (plus a little to make up for the springinessin that contraption...)

I remember reading that one now. I rember thinking about that thread when I took my heads off and telling myself I would NOT be using acorns to replace the old 12 points.

Rich

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So I take it that I'm not the only one that had this problem!

I suppose I will make some sort of tool for this

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Randy

Another thing to check is the threads on each head bolt and the threads in the cylinders. All it takes is one head bolt to bind up while torquing it in. I've reached a point where I chase EVERY thread when assembling a motor.

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You not only puked in front of Dean Wormer, YOU puked ON Dean Wormer!
CV-67 VAW-126 Med-Cruise,1986