Project Seca continues...

Well, I didn't waste any time. The day I got the bike (8 days ago) I popped open the carbs to see what's what. A few weeks back when I first saw the bike, we got it fired but it ran like crap... so I knew it shouldn't take too much to get it running right.

I found that a couple of the pilot jets were completely clogged. I couldn't even clean them with compressed air, I needed to jam a thin wire through to clean it out.

I put it all back together, crossed my fingers, engaged the choke and pressed the starter. Success! Well kinda..... it was running, but even after a few minutes of warming up, the engine would die if I gave it any gas. Ugh... oh well.

I guess I'd have to pull the carbs afterall. No biggie - it's been done before on my own bike. Ha ha ha... boy was I wrong. After figuring out how to disconnect the throttle cables and get the carbs on the bench, I managed to strip three screws. I'm convinced that they were made of a material weaker than styrofoam. Thankfully my Dremel came to the rescue and I was able to cut the screws off.

The spark plugs were replaced and the bike was buttoned back up. This is it... moment of truth.
Choke engaged, fuel turned on, and..... nothing. At this point the battery didn't have enough juice left to get it started. I knew it'd take a good amount of cranking because the whole fuel system was dry.

Sean let me borrow his battery charger so I could get it charged back up. After about 30 minutes of charging and adding a little more gas in the tank, it now runs. YESSS! Like a little kid I was anxious to take it out for a quick spin. I quickly bolted down the gas tank and cleared a path to get the bike out of the garage. Feels a bit short on power, so I think I'm going to work on some tweaking.. then again, this bike only has about 1/2 the horsepower and 1/3 the torque of my own bike.

Next step - removing the garish decals........