Recent content by jcpwn3r

Thanks! I'm actually an electrical/computer engineering student so all this carb and vacuum stuff is fairly foreign to me (as you can tell by my obvious ignorance). Most I've dabbled with in terms of combustion is calibrating EFI signals for a CBR. This is an educated (almost educated?)...

ok, just pulled off the entire airbox assembly so the regulator hose below the carbs is open and the carbs are breathing open air. Basically every single issue I've described is fixed. I road it around and had no issues. Brought it up to 9k in neutral and both cylinders are firing fine. Also I...

so do you think this is something that requires a ring replacement or should i just keep starting it up and oiling it? That's all I'm confused about right now. I just did a compression test and both cylinders are getting good, equal compression. I pulled off the airboxes and they and the...

Ok so I replaced the oil, used some mystery oil, turned it on and have a similar story. Lots of smoke once the engine is warm and I go to high RPMs. Some more info, after 5k the right cylinder cuts. Used to be both but after working the throttle for a little bit it's only the right one. The...

I'll give that a shot. When I tried to get the bike running yesterday (before all the smoke), I pulled off the carb assembly and sprayed the hell out of it with a penatrating grease, let that all run out, then sprayed the hell out of it again with starter fluid and finally sprayed it with an air...

why do you think it would suddenly dump white smoke then? i ran almost an hour without any issues. i feel like if it suddenly water dumped into the engine, it was hanging out somewhere outside the engine. edit: could the mix between royal purple and standard oil create that strange color?

alright, ill squirt the cylinders and gas with some mystery oil and report back. when i flushed out the gas tank yesterday there was a lot of red colored oil so it could use some treatment anyway

you don't think I'll do any significant damage to the cylinder walls if the rings did destroy themselves?

so after thinking about it, the smoke was coming out very white. i wasnt in a well lit area so im not 100% sure if it wasnt a little blue, but im fairly certain it was white. I'm a little wary of saying there's water in the engine because it ran with no smoke up until i gave it the beans...

So I left my XS outside all winter because I'm a poor (dumb) college kid who didn't have a garage to keep his bike, and as a result the carb basically rusted shut. Just today I was able to get the carbs back into working order through liberal application of WD-40 and a hammer, and I got my bike...

I wish I didn't have to worry about school... I'll try collect as much data as I can Friday afternoon to localize the issue. If I'm not able to really take the bike apart and check everywhere you mentioned soon, would you mind if I PM you about this?

yes, those would be the "relays" I was talking about. I haven't taken my EE classes yet so I called them a relays just because that's what I thought they were haha :doh: I did pull off the sprocket cover once to clean out that area (it hadn't been cleaned in 30 years) and sprayed the crap out...

arfstrom, are these relays you speak of from a company called orion? If so I already replaced them and that didn't solve the problem. Do you think my battery could be too far dead to trip those relays? As for the starter, I haven't pulled it out yet to test, but will do when i get the time. my...

yes and yes. The bike is a 1981 and even when the engine is running the headlight is off

I bought my XS400 a few weeks ago and the headlight never worked but the starter did. cleaned out the high/low selector switch with contact cleaner, that didn't help. Then I traced the headlight back to a relay with a yellow paint mark on it under the seat, cleaned that with contact cleaner, and...