finally got it right..a good read for those who want to mod..

Well, I havent been around much in the last week...was having alot of trouble with my bike getting all my mods sorted, it was ****ing me of in a big way so I decided I was buckling down and fixing it, and staying offline until it was fixed for good. If you are looking to mod your bike heres a short list of the problems I faced. For those of you who didnt know I installed a big bore head kit, and dome...full circle crank, triple stage reeds, I lightened the flywheel, and installed a 19mm dellorto replica carb, and cone air filter, and a fatty pipe, and muffler.....pretty standard stuff right?

Well, I got the engine apart and put together no problems....but when I tried to install on the bike the new case gasket was slightly thicker which caused the motor mount holes not to line up.....whoops..the holes had to be dremeled out slightly

The new carb and filter setup hit the rear fender....not bad enough to mess with but annoying.

the fatty exhaust came with no hanger of any kind to hold the pipe up....had to fab one and weld to the pipe (which I blew through several times, be very careful doing this)

the exhaust hit the top of the sparkplug boot so badly that I had to remove the pipe everytime I wanted to remove the plug...plus It was melting the boot (this was super super annoying)

the plug sent with the head kit was such garbage, that the compression washer crushed under the pressure of tightening causing the piston to hit the plug, and the plug never to be tight, and an airleak

throttle cable sent with carb kit wasnt even close to fitting the stock throttle....required much modification to work

nothing came with any instructions......period...

after installing everything the bike ran like garbage, there were airleaks, the throttle would stick, the piston was hitting the plug, I tried to work everything out, and after a couple weeks thought I had it good.. so last weekend I took it out for a ride....it took a long time to get started, I had replaced the cheapo plug with a better one, but it was slightly longer causing the boot to be pressed even harder against the pipe manifold. I started the bike and tried to adjust idle, but it felt like something was poking me....hmmmmm, how odd..ah, the plug boot was sending current through the pipe...everytime I touched the carb I got shocked a little....we did a quick fix wrapping the pipe in cloth tape, and I tried to restart, and on the first pull it started, and the rope broke........great, but its running so Im gonna ride.....I got to ride about 15 minutes when suddenly I lost all power on the throttle, and slowly but surely the bike crapped out, with no cord there was no way to restart........so to sum up...200 bucks worth of mods gets me one 15 minute session of poor performance riding....so I threw the bike in the truck and decided to focus and fix it right once and for all.....

when I got home I took it all apart and started over.....I found the head bolts were a little loose even though they had beeen threadlocked...theres one airleak..and explains the sudden loss of power, tightened and relocked.... one problem solved..the exhaust was really ****ing me off, so I cut the manifold in half, took a 2 inch section of salvaged manifold and welded it in this gives plenty of room for the plug now, it also forced me to fab a spacer for the hanger I made, but that was easy stuff...proble 2 solved....going through my spare parts I found a little paper gasket...uh oh..where did this go? It went under the throttle cover on the carb...I forgot to put it in...theres another airleak..installed, problem 3 solved....installed a brand new pull start rope...problem 4 solved.....the new pipe hit the plastics, so I had to cut a little section out of the bottom...problem 5 solved..so I start it today, and finally it runs great, has a totally different sound, sounds like a freakin chainsaw, but it runs good...carb finally responds to adjustment, and I dont get shocked off it anymore. Ill be taking again for a test ride this weekend....So if youre thinking of doing the basic mods...beware!! read up on them first.....I consider myself reasonably skilled at this stuff, and it took me a long time to get it right, and like I said there are NO instructions......heres a couple pics....one of the old exhaust, one of the new, and one of the finished bike

Too bad you had to add a little extra header onto the fatty pipe. Will definitely take away some from your low end power. Hopefully you have an adjustable clutch to solve that problem. Nice read, and the moral of the story is be prepared to spend a lot of money on your first bike because your going to be breaking stuff a lot because your clueless and have no idea what your doing hah. I'm finally just starting to understand these things after a year of test and tune.

You could have ran a shorter plug such as a Denso.You would not have had any issues with the boot to header.These performance pipes do not flow well with many bends in the header.You have made 1 bend in to 2 bends.Not good for performance.I would cut that extra pipe off reweld and get a Denso plug or another shorter plug.On a TUNED performance pipe you do not want to add any material to it.Its called a Tuned pipe for a reason.

^^^^ he is right

the ngk bm7a plug is way shorter than the one you have pictured, try using that plug first to see if it fits, if it does then welding the pipe back together the way it was originally well help. But glad you got the bike working, thats what mostly counts

a shorter plug would have had to be alot, alot shorter to have solved the problem.....it still would have rubbed on the pipe..I tried pivoting the exhaust one way or another , and trying to make it work at stock length, but no go....I made one 180 degree bend into 2 90s basically, it is what it is...

i notice u have a speedo what is your max mph? also what number set up did you use for the speedo?

I use 878 on all of my cags, works perfectly.

It's ALL trial and error. Your story reminds me of my first episodes with my CAG. It's the only way to learn. You can learn alot over the years.... just wait and see.