Tuesday 9/5 - Arriving in VA Beach. Fixing Stuff. Taking it Down to the Wire.
Tuesday 9/5 - Wednesday 9/6
Virginia Beach, VA
I haven’t written as much as I should have since this trip started, so let’s catch up: We left Wisconsin on Sunday, September 3rd. Dave, Mark, and Jonas were in the van with Chris riding his Harley. We arrived in Virginia Beach, VA a couple days later, with the rest of the team flying in to join us.
Right away when we arrived in Virginia Beach we started having problems with Renata. For weeks we’ve had issues with kick starting, but were able to easily push start. In Virginia the push starting was getting difficult as well. All of the other teams could see we were having issues, and everyone wanted to help. Cannonball is FULL of experts on old motorcycles, and everyone wanted to help with advice and tools.
We immediately suspected that not enough fuel was getting through the carburetor, and discovered that one of the jets was completely blocked. This was a brand-new carb that we had custom-built by AMAL as a replica of one of their vintage carbs. In hindsight we now know that we did not clean the new carb as well as we should have.
On the advice of experts from other teams, we started doing tests for Compression and Leak Down. A compression test will check what maximum compression is being generated by the cylinder as the engine turns over. Good compression is required in an engine for the mixture of fuel and air to ignite properly. At first we thought our compression (80 psi) was not as good as it should be, but after consulting with experts on these old Moto Guzzis, we found out that was in the normal range for this engine.
A leak down test puts compressed air into the cylinder with the valves closed, and tests for how much air leaks out, and from where. All engines have some leakage, but too much is bad. We found we were losing a LOT of air through our carburetor, which would indicate that the intake valve was not closing as well as it should.
Performing a Leak Down Test
When we took apart the engine, we found a TON of black crud (carbon) around the intake valve and seat. This comes from the valve not closing tightly enough, allowing burning fuel to escape past the valve. That’s not good. We believe that some of the metal shavings that didn’t get cleaned out of the carb got into the engine and were blocking the valves from fully closing.
All that black stuff shouldn’t be there.
With the help of other Cannonballers, we were able to clean up some of the carbon and lap the valve so that it sealed against the seat better.
We put everything back together and were very excited to retest compression and leak down to confirm that the problem was fixed. It was not. I think this is when we started getting a little nervous. We needed the bike to be running well enough to get it to inspection the next day.
Testing showed that now we’re leaking from around a gasket. Take the engine apart again, and fix that problem. In all we had the engine apart about 4 times that night, and decided to call it quits around 1 AM. The bike is still not running and we’re still not ready for inspection, so it’s going to be an early morning tomorrow.
