W/E 23rd November

Join the dots…

Took the bike for its first run on Monday and the vibration was bad. Power seemed fine but above 50 MPH it was shaking the fillings in my teeth. Not good. Emails posted asked for ideas and eventually I decided that I’d mis-set the valve timing and possibly the ignition timing. More getting up at 5:30 to beat the London commuter traffic…

Set the valve timing which was slightly wrong – inlet timing was retarded and then set up the ignition timing using the original ignition backplate (this is removed along with its TDC mark when you install the far superior Sachse system).

Original backplate

I should’ve always done this because it makes TDC simple and showed the ignition timing to be slightly advanced.

Starting up and still the bike shook and I started to get worried that there was a fundamental problem with the build – but as I keep saying it’s just four shafts in a bed, not difficult? Then I remember an email from Scott Potter who suggested I hadn’t aligned the balance shaft. Looking across at the discarded engine there were the dots on the balance shaft and crank gear. I hadn’t consciously set these so the chances of them being aligned were slim and so it proved. Dots aligned and viola end of vibration 🙂

Bright eyes

So with the sun fading it was time to road test the Atlas – as you can see the LED lights can be quite bright! Anyhow it ran fine on a 15 mile circuit. I was surprised at just how much I’ve missed being on two wheels and also how much more powerful even an Atlas is than the four wheeled equivalent. Once home I decided to just check the charging was all in order before putting it to bed for the morning commute…wasn’t charging! A quick comparison with it’s sister sitting in the corner and I could see that the rectifier wasn’t wired correctly – simple fix.

So fingers crossed the Atlas is back in harness…next week my attention turns to a triple!

Nick 🙂