Bike Reassembly

Today, I put my motorcycle back together, mostly. I cleaned the crankcase, cylinder block, and head as best I could with solvent, and I carefully put everything back together with the new gaskets. The gaskets appear to be made of stamped aluminum with some sort of coating. I'm hoping I got everything together well enough. All the head nuts are torqued down, and I won't know if there is a leak until I fire up the engine and/or do a compression check. Both of these checks require the engine to be running, and I'm not quite there yet.

It looks like I put the cam shafts on in the correct orientation; I checked the alignment
at least five times before tightening everything down. After I got everything tightened, I manually turned the engine over several times by rotating the crankshaft with a wrench. Nothing seemed to be seizing up, and I felt what I believe to be normal compression. At this point, I believe I was able to reinsert the pistons into the cylinders without damaging them. Again, a compression check will tell me what I need to know.

Since I've now got my engine back together, I've turned my attention to the carburetor. It was the right carb that seemed to be giving me trouble, so I disassembled it first. I didn't find any clogged jets or ports anywhere in the system. The only abnormality I did find
was the carburetor piston seemed to be slightly stuck when I removed it from the body. The piston is attached to a diaphragm, and pressure differences on either side of the diaphragm raise or lower the piston, which in turn raises or lowers a needle valve that controls fuel flow within the carb. Maybe my problem was as simple as a stuck piston that can be fixed by a simple disassembly and reassembly. I'm certainly hoping that is the case. (There's a quick connect in the parts picture. I'm toying with the idea of putting those between my fuel tank and petcock to make tank removal easier.)

Tomorrow I will be replacing a few fuel lines. (I wanted to complete my carb work before deciding how much tubing to buy.) After that, I've only got a few parts to reattach to the motorcycle: carburetor, air box, fuel tank. Then I've got to run the fuel/vacuum lines and reconnect the control cables.

After all that, we'll see if the bike is running again, and if I was able to correctly diagnose and fix my mechanical problems. Wish me luck.