Some Days...........

[Carl La Fong]

......I think life is out to get me.
After the fire, I finally decided that enough was enough, and I packed up my carburetor and sent it off to Mike to do his magic. Finally, it is supposed to be here in a day or two. This morning, I go down to the shop to dink around. It's hot, so I decide to open the door for some ventilation. The door feels like its welded to the floor. I look up and, sure enough, the torsion spring has shit the bed. Now, bear in mind that the same thing happened in our garage last month. I was unable to get in for two weeks until the new springs arrived. The garage door installers have the whole thing sewn up. They won't sell you a spring, but they're happy to sent a "technician" over to install it for me. I installed all 3 overhead doors at The Fongderosa, and I certainly don't need some minimum wage guy, with a sketchy immigration status, to charge me 300 bucks to do something that I have done myself with, I might add, great success. So, it's back to Amazon to order some new ones and play the waiting game. I guess, in the meantime, I can remove the springs from the good door (the shop has two, 18 foot doors)and switch them to the busted side so I can get the bike out. I rarely open the other door, anyway. What a PITA. I'm also elbows deep in a project on my truck, building a new grille surround and front bumper with KC lamps, all part of the upcoming paint job that has been put off for too long

[johnny redneck]

Carl; You can clamp the spring back together with a cable clamp for a temporary repair till the new springs come. Take a 1/2" bar about 18" long and put 32 1/4 turns back on the spring and you will be back in business. The other thing you can do is draw a line from one end of the spring to the other when there is no tension on it, as you wind it up the straight line will turn to diagonal lines. When you have 8 diagonal lines you will have 32 1/4 turns. to order the right spring you need the wire size, the ID, and the length.

[Greg S]

Carl -

For what it is worth, reading about your fire incident probably saved me a lot of grief.

When leaving the Mountain Boss Hoss open house, I loaded my bike into the trailer for the ride home. Being distracted by something, I forgot to shut off the fuel tank petcock. When I arrived home, the engine would not crank over, and the problem was quickly diagnosed as hydrolock. Without reading your story, I may have remembered to crank the engine over with the plugs removed, and the ignition switch "OFF", and I may not have remembered to put the switch in the off position. Either way, I was thinking about what happened to you, and decided that I did not want my bike and pants to be on fire. Everything went without incident.

As an aside, I was wondering how common it is to damage the internals of an engine when hydrolocking upon startup.

[Greg S]

If the torsion spring broke near the end, I have sometimes just thrown the broken piece away, ground down the remaining end until smooth, and then reinstalled the spring. This would buy enough time to find the appropriate replacement part.

[Carl La Fong]

Glad my experience saved one person from immolating himself.
The spring busted right in the middle
I should have it open today, using the springs from the other door. Two new sets are on their way. The new carb is here and, hopefully, I can hot lap it around the block this evening or tomorrow

[Carl La Fong]

I got the carb installed yesterday. The bike fired immediately and settled down into a nice idle. A bit fast, but a quick turn on the idle stop screw solved that. It comes off idle real nice. No hesitation at all. The exhaust doesn't stink like it used to. I still can't get the door open. I started to swap the springs, then UPS notified me that the new ones would be here today, so I'll just wait for the driver. Today won't work anyways since I will be spending the better part of the afternoon and the early evening in the bathroom. Yes, it's that time again. The dreaded colonoscopy. I've had so many of them, it seems routine by now. If you're 50, or so, or have a family history of colorectal cancer, GET ONE!!! A day sitting on the can and a few minutes of having a hose stuck up your ass is worth your life or a life of wearing a bag.
Sermon over