Well after much tinkering, pondering and bugging of Neil (thank you) I
think the ignition is working fine. I got her to fire up tonight and
both pipes got hot so she was firing on all two. Still making a lot of
racket though. So, per Neil's advice I decided to make sure the valves
were adjusted right. I pulled the little covers off the number one
valve cover and noticed that there were little dings in the cover....
weird. Then I noticed there was no lock nut on one of the intake
valves... And so here we go... pull stuff off to make room... pull off
the valve cover and start to look around and I find the nut... then the
metal ring that goes on top of the spring but I couldn't find the stay
(little part that holds it all together on the valve stem). I hit the
Clymer manual and it looks like I have to pull the head to get that all
back together. This raises a couple questions. 1. Is there a way to get
this all back together without pulling the head? 2. Does that passage
that the cam chain comes up go all the way to the bottom of the crank
case? I'm guessing the stay might have made the journey! 3. Is there
any other damage I should be looking for resulting from the parts
floating around? FWIW: The nut and ring were pretty nicely stashed out
of the way. No scratches or dings to speak of. One other interesting
note. Not only did the idiot that last adjusted these not tighten the
nut enough, the other clearances are ZERO!!! I couldn't cram my
smallest feeler in them let alone 0.1mm. I pulled the covers on the
rear and all the hardware is in place there. I'm hoping once I get all
the valves corrected this baby should purr... I put pics of the carnage
on my picasa page here http://picasaweb.google.com/kenconvery/Ascot
<http://picasaweb.google.com/kenconvery/Ascot>  


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