NE0

Hi Guys Heres a mystery problem. Past week I've had an unexplained engine problem. Happened twice now!!! Nothings changed recently,( other than new carb needle and jets back in February) but its been ok since then. 1st occurrence. Rode bike home 7miles no problem. Got to the back gate, got off bike with the engine ticking over and used the headlight to unlock the gate. Whilst I was off the bike and by the gate the engine started to race away, nobody was on it!!! it was if some one had pulled open the throttle! My thoughts instantly was perhaps the steering whilst parked was somehow affecting the cable,, quickly returning to the bike and setting the bike straight the bike continued to rev faster and faster, I switched the engine kill, and it seemed to continue!!!! pulled out the keys, no effect! PANIC!!!! Then put it in gear, braked hard and stalled it!........weird or what? Same things just happened!! 11:00pm at night with my bike racing and nobody on it!! but it was ticking over when i got off and walked away and the steering was straight ahead..... I was 8 ft away when all of a sudden the engine started racing away. very rapidly going from tick over to screaming!!! same scenario as above. What the F.......is going on? .........................................................................Poltergeist?

I assume the lights were working 'perfectly' before you changed the bulb? so in that sense NOTHING has changed....other than the bulb. Therefore we can assume the feed wiring and earths have not been disturbed? If so, then it all points to the bulb, have you simply tried another? yes, you're right in that the bulb has offset pins so it can only go one way in to the holder and I assume you have turned it by a quater of a turn to lock it in place. The bulb has 2 contacts and once inserted into the holder those contacts need to touch the two contacts in the holder the 1/4 turn achieves this. However, the two contacts are separate circuits, one does the brake the other the tail light. Each circuit cannot normally make 'live' the two contacts of the bulb unless the contacts are in someway touching both . ie not turned in the holder properly It does point to the bulb if nothing else has changed. alternatively....if the wirings been disturbed then 'poor earthing' is often a culprit. but you can narrow it down by a little detective work.....i.e which circuit is at fault. You say both elements are 'on' (you need to be specific as we're not there with you.....) Do you mean the when you apply the brake or turn on the lights? either way , what happens when you apply the brake? or visa versa. what happens when you apply just the brake, i.e with the lights OFF.? hope this helps.

I recently replaced my fork seals on my 400/4 about a month ago. Assuming your forks are standard with the stanchions fitted on top, which means your seals fit into the lower forks spring side down. They fit about the thickness of a seal down inside the fork, not flush with the top. A common cause of leakage is rust spots on the chrome stanchions sliding over the seal, this rough surface can score and damage the seal or simply prevent a good seal, and they leak. Check the condition of the chrome its got to be smooth.

Hi mar , welcome to the club, I'm sure Sacha and katie will be pleased to have another female around!

'kin Hell !!!!!! One lucky rider! plus..............300th post for me!!!

This post might help, he's got the same bike, circuit diagram at the bottom.

The might look awful to you, but they DO serve a purpose.......they tell everyone that you're still learning...and car drivers (who make up the majority) tend to give you a wider berth, it's got nothing to do with knocking you over! they just don't want YOU to scratch their nice shiney cars. However, learner drivers tend to be involved in quite a few accidents, that's one reason why they have higher insurance. The police might never pull you over, thats true...........BUT they do speak to you in A&E if you are unfortunate to have an accident, and they will be asking you several questions. The traffic police tend to be very eagle eyed, they look at detail like:- I noticed you've only got one L plate on, or I couldn't find the other one or indeed there was no evidence to suggest you had one on before the crash. As the others have said, don't draw attention to yourself, its not worth it, Nobody wants you to have an accident and you might never be pulled over, but once you finally passed your test, you will get much satisfaction at ripping off two L plates instead of one . Although after that you also might notice.......... just how much closer the car drivers are! Good luck and happy riding.

Had them apart jimmy in the past, My first one was a 1961 lambretta unbelievable how it worked as there was hardly any parts inside! surprised it worked at all just a coil, needle and one magnet, Talk about simplicity! However, you're not wrong in your assumption as the odometer is a worm drive which turns the number cogs over and that is driven by the cable and a gear or two. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ And before anyone says about putting a drill on the end to wind the clock on, its an old wives tale! At best you could make the speedo go up to 40 mph! if you're lucky! which also means it will take one hour to advance the odometer 40 miles, ie 40 miles in one hour! Even if you could make it do 100mph it will still only advance the clock by 100 miles after an hour! You can't 'clock it' with a drill, it will take years!, the only thing you can do is take the number cogs out and reset them back into 0000 line!

OOhhhh am I Real biker then?

I used Plasticote BBQ paint on Airheads recommendation on my DT's exhaust pipe. However, within 6 inches of the cyclinder head I find it tends to burn off after a few months. The rest of the pipe is fine, I just re apply it when it looks a bit tat! The cylinder head was painted with Simonez Engine paint and has lasted well on the aluminium however, it too burned off from the first 6 inches of the exhaust.

You won't have caused any damage,... The drive cable turns a mechanism inside the speedo, which in turn creates a magnetic field, The needle part is attached to a coil (like a clock spring and as thin as one) which responds to the changes in the field, whilst the needle will be up against the stop, it won't be being wound up by the mechanical parts! it will survive.

I wrote this original post back in 2011 and the price doesn't seem to have changed! £120 for two and mine was around £130 which included postage. Anyone fancy resurrecting my post on DT 12volt conversion? NB Jeeeesuzzzzzz I've just seen its been read over 27,700 times and is in the top 4 of the most read in the workshop section!! now if only i had a £1 for every read..............................(this time next year Rodney we'll be millionaires!)

My Honda clocks were sealed in the same way with a chrome ring crimped on at manufacture creating a 'sealed for life' component I couldn't get mine off, So I used a Dremel and cut through the ring. Restored the clock and soldered on 2 tags at 90 degree to the ring and screwed them back together with a miniature nut and bolt. I covered the join in car body filler and added a bit of black and silver paint to 'hide' it. that was over 20 years ago and its still together. Here's a photo of the ring so you can see the' join' although I could have hidden it around the side next to the 'dashboard lights'

Then I think we're not talking about the same part! Mines an M10 bolt for sure. Replacing part no 17 http://www.cmsnl.com/yamaha-dt175f-1979_model8692/pinwith-hole_9024012059/ On the upper swinging arm to shock pin. Its Not an M6 mm bolt.

I had the same trouble trying to source one back in 2011 for my round tube swing arm. I ended up using an M10 Stainless Steel bolt about 20cm long with a long plain shank, I cut off the threaded part and drilled a hole in the side for a split pin. (surprisingly easy to drill with a new bit) It was a nice snug fit, no play, and is still there today. Works a treat. The plain shaft has a diameter of 12mm same as the original. Cost was a few pound on ebay i think I bought a pack of two.

Now where did HE go?

.......Both lights would flicker every now and then with moving the wires and vibrations. you've answered your own problem in your first post! because that is NOT supposed to happen no matter how old your bike is! I had a similar problem on one of my bikes, if I moved the wiring loom the lights would go out, In fact I traced it to moving the steering which would make the lights go out/flicker (ie the wiring loom around the headstock). If you checked the wires with a multimeter without doing anything else it would have "passed".....until you moved the wires/loom! Turned out that moisture had corroded one of the wires resulting in a poor joint, every time you moved the steering the slight movement on the loom stressed the joint. I peeled back the insulation found the wires -repaired the offending joint , and have had no trouble since. Yours might not be down to corrosion, but it points to the wiring being the source of your problem, it might simply be a connector which has come slightly apart and simply needs plugging back in. Remember most problems are caused by simple little things!

From your description it sounds like some form of fuel starvation. Simple things first. Check the fuel cap of the tank to ensure the breather is not blocked/partially blocked. or it may have a rubber gasket which has become 'stuck' If its blocked as the fuel is used, a vacuum is created above the fuel which will in turn stop the fuel from leaving the tank. As you throttle up, you use more fuel and the vacuum is created. The throttle doesn't respond (like what you face when the fuel tank goes dry). May be helpful?

You may of course have more then one problem The Dash probably uses a common earth but the headlight issue sounds a little different. I'm not sure it would be a common earth problem as you say the main beam is ok, you see the light bulb dip and beam filaments will share the same earth wire. If the Main beam is unaffected then I would think its the Dip live feed wire or indeed the bulb itself. Might just be a dirty contact on the bulb. Check the bulb first. Then look for trouble.....

Nice work DT that looks like a huge piece of kit!!! I've got one of those small Maplin Ultrasonic cleaner, I say small, a carb fits inside, do it one side first then turn it over. I do find the more parts you put in, they don't clean up so well as they do when in on their own. I'm sure its down to 'interference' of the ultrasonic waves, a bit like throwing two stones into different areas of a pond and where the ripples meet the waves are dispersed. Experimenting with various solutions and temperatures, I found using just boiled water best and despite trying detergents etc I was quite impressed with the organic seaweed based cleaner it came with which was most effective for aluminium and brass.

Here's me in 1978 in my home town of Brighton on my first ever motorbike, all right........... scooter! I never purchased it to be a mod, I bought it for £12 because it was all i could afford and It was a stepping stone to get on the road. Other friends had various colours of FS1E's, a Vespa, Puch maxi, Honda 'Hairdryer' SS50, a Yamaha RD250 in blue and the best of all was the FANTIC Chopper! Remember back then the Limit was 250cc not 125cc. This was a 1961 175cc Li series 2 which i purchased a few years earlier in 1975 from a friends brother from 'around the corner' he'd owned it through the 60's in Brighton. It was therefore a genuine mod bike, purchased I might add..... BEFORE the 70's mod revival. This blue one went to the great scrapyard in the sky and It appears to be still registered to me on the DVLA website, not sure what happened there as I sent back the log book saying it was scrapped! I did purchase a bright orange one as a replacement for about £75 (loads of money back then!!) I put on loads of mirrors and flyscreen and then Quadrophenia came out and I sold it for hundreds of pounds!! can't remember how much exactly but I made a mint........and have never managed to make any money thereafter!!! Just Look at those Flares!

It's a digital display then, which is flashing the word "OIL" ?

Every now and then Blackhat likes to pull my leg on my ownership of a Honda, so when he said i'd got a fetish....... I thought I'd get in there first! ( I notice I replied to blackhat at the same time as DT50 posted, so mine got out of sequence )

and I've got a Honda too!

DT50's suggestion might be right afterall..... http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Harley-Davidson-Motorcycle-Black-Leather-Boots-Women-High-Heels-4-Zip-Up-Sz-9-5/131178333865?_trksid=p2050601.c100103.m2451&_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20140211150826%26meid%3D6576927737016595693%26pid%3D100103%26prg%3D20140211150826%26rkt%3D4%26clkid%3D6576930821238577852&_qi=RTM1790005#ht_253wt_922 how about those for size!!, should be able to touch the floor all right..................won't be able to ride the bike though!!!