Well I got the title transferred for the Yamaha.
I stopped at a cash machine on the way home and tried to take out $100.00 (wasn’t sure how much I needed.) The machine told me “Amount too large”. WTF?
So I stopped at a different machine. Tried to take out $100.00 again. Again the machine told me “Amount too large”. Damn it. So I tried $80.00. That it let me have. Hrm. (And no, Liz had not taken cash out either.)
Then I stopped at the DMV office in Richfield at 6700 Portland (sort of on my way home.) Took a number and waited for about 15 minutes. They were moving people through pretty fast, I was impressed.
I marched up to the counter. The woman asked “How much did you pay for the bike?”
“$250.00” I told her.
She didn’t even bat an eye. “$43.50 please.”
Cool! Transferred the title and got a sticker for the plate.I drove home and stuck the sticker on the plate. Whoo-hoo.
It was National Night Out last night and I needed to go to the store to get some ice and hot dogs and such. So I grabbed my cooler and tossed it into the sidecar. (Man, that rocks!)
Turn the key, stick a screwdriver into the started button hole (the button is missing, so you have to use something metal to start it,) and it wouldn’t start.
Cranked and cranked and cranked. Sometimes it fired once and then died. Sometimes it backfired through the exhaust. Sometimes it backfired through the carbs.
DAMN IT!
So I tried until the battery was dead, then I grabbed my jumper cables and tried some more. No go. I even borrowed some gas from a neighbor. Still no go.
So I drove the damed van to the store.
Later that evening I was showing off the sidecar rig to a neighbor and I thought “what the hell” and tried to start it. It cranked a bit and then started up. But it was running really rough. The neighbor thought maybe it was not running on all cylinders and he started feeling the exhaust pipes.
Sure enough, cylinders 2 and 4 were hot, 1 and 3 were cold.
The bike has two coils, one firing 1 and 3, and one firing 2 and 4. Some sort of ignition problem then. Yippie.
So I go into the house to get my Volt/Ohm Meter to start troubleshooting and I can’t find it! Arrrrgh! I don’t remember the last time I used it either, so I have no idea where I might have left it.
This is what comes of being an un-organized schmuck. I am lazy and don’t put my tools away where they belong when I am done with them, so I can’t find them when I need them. It’s my own damned fault, and I know that I do it.
So I can’t find my damned VOM and I can’t troubleshoot the ignition system without it.
Today I’m going to Radio Shack and buying a new one.
According to the Haynes manual, the trouble is one of three things:
- Bad spark coil
- Bad trigger coil
- Bad ignition module (black box)
I could also be a bad connection somewhere. I did take my test lamp and verify that the coil gets power when the ignition is turned on, but that’s about as far as I can go without a VOM.
With a VOM, you can do some simple resistance tests to see which component is busted.
It’s also possible that there is water somewhere that there shouldn’t be, as I did wash the bike on Saturday…
Guess I know what I’m doing tonight.
