QuestionI have a 1973 Yamaha RD350 which I picked up with a burnt hole in the left piston. I smoothed out the cylinder and put in stock pistons and rings in. I had it running good but it was smoking a lot. Turns out the left piston did not seal properly and was covered with oil when I took it back apart. I decided to go another route and bought new Weisco pistons and rings (4th over) and picked up a set of used cylinders which I had bored, etc.. I put the engine back together but could not get it started. It was not getting gas for some reason. If you put gas into the cylinder it would start briefly. The carbs were pulled off a cleaned but it still does not seem to be getting any gas. There is gas in the fuel line and in the carb bowl but the gas is not getting into the cylinders. Everything (except for the excessive smoking) worked fine before until I put the Weisco pistons in. What did I do wrong? What am I missing? Any help would be appreciated.
AnswerBrad,
First off, be sure you are getting a strong blue spark upon kick over on both plugs. If that's a go, give the air box a spritz of starting fluid/ether and try again. If you get ignition you are dealing with a carb problem. This could be many things from float hieght setting to damage to main jet or it's setting to malfunctioning float needle, etc. I can't go into every procedure so I recommend you purchase the Haynes manual for 350's, I believe they're still available and very good. If not, try motocarrera.com for a link to one, there still popular projects in the states and many are still raced in vintage races.
Keep in mind the bike was received with a damaged piston. This could be due to a lean mixture on that cylinder and/or preignition caused by improper timing and an exceptionally hot running cylinder. You will need to inspect the points thorougly and set them accordingly, you will need a runnout gauge (gone over well in manual). Be weary of pre ignition, here is a paste in I've sent others who have had this problem:
Pre-Ignition
The definition of pre-ignition is the ignition of the fuel/air charge prior to the spark plug firing. Pre-ignition caused by some other ignition source such as an overheated spark plug tip, carbon deposits in the combustion chamber and, rarely, a burned exhaust valve; all act as a glow plug to ignite the charge.
Keep in mind the following sequence when analyzing pre-ignition. The charge enters the combustion chamber as the piston reaches BDC for intake; the piston next reverses direction and starts to compress the charge. Since the spark voltage requirements to light the charge increase in proportion with the amount of charge compression; almost anything can ignite the proper fuel/air mixture at BDC!! BDC or before is the easiest time to light that mixture. It becomes progressively more difficult as the pressure starts to build.
A glowing spot somewhere in the chamber is the most likely point for pre-ignition to occur. It is very conceivable that if you have something glowing, like a spark plug tip or a carbon ember, it could ignite the charge while the piston is very early in the compression stoke. The result is understandable; for the entire compression stroke, or a great portion of it, the engine is trying to compress a hot mass of expanded gas. That obviously puts tremendous load on the engine and adds tremendous heat into its parts. Substantial damage occurs very quickly. You can't hear it because there is no rapid pressure rise. This all occurs well before the spark plug fires.
Remember, the spark plug ignites the mixture and a sharp pressure spike occurs after that, when the detonation occurs. That's what you hear. With pre-ignition, the ignition of the charge happens far ahead of the spark plug firing, in my example, very, very far ahead of it when the compression stroke just starts. There is no very rapid pressure spike like with detonation. Instead, it is a tremendous amount of pressure which is present for a very long dwell time, i.e., the entire compression stroke. That's what puts such large loads on the parts. There is no sharp pressure spike to resonate the block and the head to cause any noise. So you never hear it, the engine just blows up! That's why pre-ignition is so insidious. It is hardly detectable before it occurs. When it occurs you only know about it after the fact. It causes a catastrophic failure very quickly because the heat and pressures are so intense.
An engine can live with detonation occurring for considerable periods of time, relatively speaking. There are no engines that will live for any period of time when pre-ignition occurs. When people see broken ring lands they mistakenly blame it on pre-ignition and overlook the hammering from detonation that caused the problem. A hole in the middle of the piston, particularly a melted hole in the middle of a piston, is due to the extreme heat and pressure of pre-ignition.
Other signs of pre-ignition are melted spark plugs showing splattered, melted, fused looking porcelain. Many times a "pre-ignited plug" will melt away the ground electrode. What's left will look all spattered and fuzzy looking. The center electrode will be melted and gone and its porcelain will be spattered and melted. This is a typical sign of incipient pre-ignition.
The plug may be getting hot, melting and "getting ready" to act as a pre-ignition source. The plug can actually melt without pre-ignition occurring. However, the melted plug can cause pre-ignition the next time around.
Thetypical pre-ignition indicator, of course, would be the hole in the piston. This occurs because in trying to compress the already burned mixture the parts soak up a tremendous amount of heat very quickly. The only ones that survive are the ones that have a high thermal inertia, like the cylinder head or cylinder wall. The piston, being aluminum, has a low thermal inertia (aluminum soaks up the heat very rapidly). The crown of the piston is relatively thin, it gets very hot, it can't reject the heat, it has tremendous pressure loads against it and the result is a hole in the middle of the piston where it is weakest.
I want to emphasis that when most people think of pre-ignition they generally accept the fact that the charge was ignited before the spark plug fires. However, I believe they limit their thinking to 5-10 degrees before the spark plug fires. You have to really accept that the most likely point for pre-ignition to occur is 180 degrees BTDC, some 160 degrees before the spark plug would have fired because that's the point (if there is a glowing ember in the chamber) when it's most likely to be ignited. We are talking some 160-180 degrees of bum being compressed that would normally be relatively cool. A piston will only take a few revolutions of that distress before it fails. As for detonation, it can get hammered on for seconds, minutes, or hours depending on the output of the engine and the load, before any damage occurs. Pre-ignition damage is almost instantaneous.
Hope this helps,
Mike
