So today...I managed to set a motor on fire. again. Not for long, and no damage done, but...yeah...again...
I was welding a bracket onto my pipe stand to hold the fuel tank. In the past, I had just tied it on with zip ties or a strap or whatever was handy, but that wasn't working, so I decided to fix it properly. Without removing the motor that was in the stand.
Soo...spark...gasoline on the outside of the motor...small fire. It just burned off the cases, but the CDI looked a lot the worse for wear. Cleaned it up, though, and no harm done.
Then, immediately after my victorious First Start Video, the kickstart on the new Stella motor decided to quit kicking. Just clicking and the kickstart gear quit engaging, so I tore into the motor to see what was up and...wow.
I didn't do the initial build. I bought it off a friend about 80% complete and knowing it was a bitsa motor ("some bitsa this motor, some bitsa that motor"). I split the cases found a broken tooth on the kickstart gear. Oof.
Then, I noticed some clutch cork stuck to the inside of the case, so I took a look over there and the clutch circlip had popped loose, which meant I got to pull the clutch and reassesmble it. Luckily, no damage to the parts, so just time and effort there.
The next time someone says, "My bike quite working and just makes a bunch of noise when I try to kick it over," ask them if it sounds like this:
What's most amazing to me is that two extremely rare failures decided to happen literally at the exact same time (fixing the clutch by itself didn't fix the kickstart). They have to be related, but wow. What're the odds? (In my case, I'm pretty sure they're 10x whatever they are for the rest of the univierse)
I fit the cases with a new kickstart gear (yay, dragon parts hoard!) to test and it's still slipping. Looked more closely at the primary and the kickstart teeth on it were clapped out, too. Luckily, I had a spare Stella primary in the pile. Actually, still in a set of cracked Stella cases, but close enough.
Remove the old primary, which was missing a needle bearing, and then install the new primary. Button it back up and I'm in business. Finished the reassembly and it's time for a test start.
So a build, a fire, and a complete unplanned rebuild, but I'm pretty much back on track to get the green Stella ready to roll again.
And you'd think I'd have noticed when I cut myself enough to have blood running down my leg, but nope...had no idea until I saw it in the video.