Four Wheel Forum

Hello everyone, this forum is great! I have gathered so much information for the past few days reading over most all of the posts. Anyways, I picked up a complete ca95 last week and have been tearing it apart to see how everything is looking. The engine is free and has compression as far as I can tell. Background story to the bike; The gentleman I bought it from never had it running but bought it last fall from a guy who was able to start the engine up. The engine was being run from a separate tank as the stock one was rusted all up. So far I have taken off and cleaned the carb, still working on the petcock, and now I have pulled the right engine cover off and everything looks great besides the old oil. My question is if I am able to just spray down the inside of the engine with carb cleaner to get rid of all the old oil? I would think that would be okay, but I just want to get some expert feedback. Also the little metal cross thing in my petcock has 3 of the four metal pieces broken off. am I screwed on the petcock or is there some sort of a fix I can do with that? Thanks again!

-Kevin

Hey shoban, most carb cleaners contain Toluene which is found naturally in oil, it should break down the old oil, but bear in mind Toluene will also eat metals etc. If it is sludge I'd make sure the oil pump and filter were clean then scrape the sludge out, make sure you have a good gasket seal it up add the new oil (search oil here for topics on that) and i'd add some marvel mystery oil in too I love that stuff.

As for the petcock, even if it wasn't broke you might be screwed the petcocks on these are very particular and touchy/leaky. But with some patience you can get good results. I dont know how well it will work or at all with the busted part, but a different petcock can be retrofitted and made to work. I believe Spokes has a few pictures of one and there are many informative posts about the petcock here so a little digging on the topic might help you decide what to do with it good luck!

Go for it. You won't hurt anything. Just make sure you rotate the engine with oil in it a for a couple of minutes once you reassemble everything before you try and start the engine. You want to make sure to get the oil pumping around all the bearings before you put power to them. Just take the spark plug out and push it around in gear to get oil going through the engine.

Here are some pictures of me splitting the transmission and cleaning it out. I just grabbed a couple small putty knives and started scraping the sludge out. Then used some PB Blaster and Brakleen to get all that crap out. Your engine will thank you.

http://www.fourwheelforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=99

Search around the forum here and you'll find lots and lots of advice and pictures about petcock rebuilding. You need to buy a new cross piece as that is the spring that hold the discs together inside - if its broke you'll leak fuel hopelessly! Find a new one.