My 1950 A10 plunger (with sidecar) is showing no signs of life at all. The bike has been running great until a few weeks ago when the exhaust rocker box gasket split and lots of oil came out. No big deal, I thought. So I when I got home, I took the rocker boxes off, fitted a new gasket and recalibrated the valve clearances and double checked them. Started the bike and away I went.
A couple of days later, I went for another bike ride and started to encounter problems. A few minutes into my journey the engine stopped when I was at the traffic lights. Then a few minutes later, it started to splutter. I remedied this by giving it some more throttle and started to make my way home. Then the real trouble happened. The engine started to only fire on one cylinder. I stopped. Tried to see if the cables from the magneto had came loose. Nope. Managed to get the engine going again after two dozen kicks. Still running on one cylinder. Instead of abandoning the bike by the side of the road, I decided to rough it out and make the 2 mile trip home running on one cylinder.
Now comes my diagnostics:
Carburettor has not been touched in months. I checked the carb nonetheless (Jets, float level). Everything appears to be fine.
Could the spark plugs have fouled? The spark plugs looked a little (but not very) black. So I placed new spark plugs in. Engine still wouldn't start.
Could the bike have wet sumped? Drained the crankcase of oil. Engine still wouldn't start.
Could the valve clearance be wrong? Triple checked valve clearance. All within spec. Engine still wouldn't start.
Could I have bad compression? Checked compression and found each cylinder to have 150psi. Plenty of pressure. Not that then.
So it must be the ignition!.My magneto was well overdue a restoration so I sent it to APL magnetos. Got it back a week later. Set the timing i.e. when the points just begin to separate at 11/32" before TDC on the compression stroke. Made sure that I tightened the double threaded nut back on with the auto-advance unit wedged in the fully advanced position....Engine didn't start!
Repeated this step five more times. Engine still won't start.
Finally, failing to see any other alternatives. I emptied the tanks petrol and filled it with a gallon of fresh petrol. Still no luck.
Does anyone else have any idea about what could possibly be preventing this motorcycle from starting/running? I'm all out of ideas. Cheers :)