Yea. I just went out to my bike in th garage, and measured crankcase temp at 43 degrees F. Put charger on and cranked it over, slow. Was cranking at 36 Amps. Battery cables are new. They were very bad before. Someone spliced them with bolts and lots of black tape! Oh yea, and all it did was backfire. So, a few days ago I took my heatgun to the crankcase abd brought the temp to about 66 Degrees F and it started! Also was cranking over way faster. AND, no backfiring. Go fugure. I just bought this bike a few months ago and this will be it's first summer (When spring arrives). It's been sitting a very long time I think, based on what I've found in the carb and the rust under the seat. Anyway, can't wait for the warm weather to kick in!
I also read in here somewhere that someone suggested a battery blanket warmer would do the trick. Not up here in Canada Eh. I tried a 300W magnetic block heater pressed under the crankcase with a floor jack. After a week, still not warm! But I got an idea. I sandwiched a 1500w water heater element between 2 pieces of 1/8" steel plates and mounted a thermal switch on the end of it. Anybody else want to try this, I'd recommend one of those thermo disk things they sell for elecric water heaters.
Tried it last night and it heats up about 4 degrees F per hour. I'm happy with that.
Backfiring reolved, I think. Bought a used Auto Advance mechanism because I though the old one was worn. But it wasn't and I hooked up the test light across the points and found that, as I suspected, points were opening in two positions per cycle! I reset the points so the second part didn't light and voilah! I remember gapping the points at about 13 thousandths, but maybe I was in the wrong position when I did that. Anyway, since the points only open in one position now, I'm sure the backfiring is stopped.
Sure can'twait till the warm weather comes, eh? But I'll try my heater this weekend, froday overnight for a saturday morning start.