Build Day 22 - Its Alive After Attempt One, Two ...

Starting the engine was our next big step after having the car on the wheels. If you just want to see the video go straight to the bottom. If you want to hear me waffle on how it went, read below.

The engine needed a bit of prepping before we could start it so this is the process we followed.

Fill the battery with its acid and charge
Fill the diff with oil - long process with the small breather tube
Fill the engine with oil - 3/4 full in oil window
Reattach the radiator, top and bottom hose, coolant tank and fill with water
Filled the tank with fuel
Connect all the wiring and battery
We've never been sure what gear we had been in and always found it difficult to change so left it so we jacked the rear up and left it in neutral.

So were ready to start with a fire extinguisher at hand, dad in the cock pit ready with the clutch and accelerator pedals and me ready to connect all the wires getting electricuted or bringing the beast to life. I turned the cut off switch and nothing - good, then I turned the key and we had dash lights - real good!. One thing left - I hold I manually connect the start wire to the negative battery terminal and the starter jumps to life but so does the prop and driveshafts and the wheels start spinning - oh dear! Certainly not in neutral. We try going for some other gears and nothing then we hear a pop from the clutch and are left with plenty of slack in the pedal.

We played with the clutch cable trying to adjust it but nothing happened. Our next thought is the clutch, so we removed the cover and are baffled with what were looking at as ive changed car clutches but this is different its a wet clutch with several clutch frition plates. After some help from members on locostbuilders we determine we have dislocated the clutch stem from the lever. Lots of fiddling and several attempts later we have the clutch re attached with minimal slack so we connected the cables and finally its working as it should again.

Second attempt
Before we start it we now want to ensure were in neutral so we get the car back on the floor and rock it forward and back to help us change gear as the engines been sitting for over a year so we assume the parts aren't oiled and are just very stiff. After some head scratching we find neutral and its where I thought 5th was going to be so we mounted the paddles up upside down - Doh! so we go to start again. Lights come on, pump primes and the starter operates and this time the prop doesnt turn so were happy were in neutral so we put the plugs back in but the engine still doesnt fire.

Now it must be down to the wiring. First problem is we have a fault code - number 30 displayed by our clocks mean the bikes been overturned so the tilt sensors at fault. We had sealed the sensor at an angle to keep the wiring as yamaha intended to reduce chances of bad connections but turns out our solution hadnt worked so we replaced it with a 1/4w 510ohm resitor. With this in place we checked the clock and the fault code had disapeared - great so we try again but still no spark or smell of fuel from the cylinder which points to the ecu not sending the signals to either the injectors or the spark plugs

Now its getting technical so we checked the continuity of wires. Theres a lot so this took a while. There were a few randoms not being connected to something they should be which is worrying as the loom looks original with all the original coverings with printed Yamaha serial numbers. Im at the point of giving up as its getting more technical than i know and i had spent evenings and some of the weekends on it already. Jim kindly came to the rescue and recognised the room instantly from one of his own past builds. He quite quickly came to the realisation we should have a cycle lock connection(Immobolisher wiring for european R1's). Searching around he found nothing and also though the loom looked original but decided best thing to do was to rip it all up and trace wires to their components to see where the trouble was. Having spent a while tidying the loom up and routing it neatly we were a bit resilient in the idea but it had to be done.

Sheath off and we can instantly see the problem its been butchered with important wires being earthed, not connected or not even present. Jim started us up with the starter relay circuit checking and tracing each individual wire for continuity and what it went to. Loads of repair work and soldering left us with the starter relay done and Jim left us the rest to finish today - sunday.

Being a bit hungover I almost wrote the morning off but instead I hit the wiring again. Going over the whole loom; ECU, sensors, relays, fuse box and clocks i tidied the whole loom up. Feeling a bit closer I thought what the hell, lets try and start it. We got in to the whole procedure that we tried for the first time so Dad flicked the switch for the starter and amazingly we had sparks. Got the plugs back in and it was turning but with only one injector pulsing. I didnt fancy removing the injector rail so removing the fuel line fed some injector cleaner straight in and sprayed throttle body cleaner into the inlet by the injector. Again we went to start and POP, POP, POP then a BANG and another untill the roar of the engine fire could be heard all around us. The rest of the family ran out to the drive and couldnt believe it, neither could we so we turned it off and gave our selfs a pat on the back.

Heres the video of the second start as we didnt expect it to go the first time.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4jMFXMvojOE