New to bikes, just picked up an 86 VF500 as my 1.5th bike.

Hey everyone.

I'm just now getting into bikes. I've been working on and off fixing a truly butchered 1980/81/83 Kawi KZ/GPZ550 (previous owners suck so hard), and eventually gave up when I realized that at the end of the day, the single piston front brake had a pad the size of a silver dollar, and I really just didn't love the bike.

So bumming around on craigslist, I saw an ad for a 1986 VF500 for $400. Immediately called the guy and went to see it.

I thought: Okay, it's probably stolen or salvage.
He showed me the clean title, matching the name on his driver's license.

Yeah, but it's probably 6 years out of reg or something.
Showed me the 2011 tags.

Haha, the electrical probably doesn't work.
...Everything works, except the fan switch.

The engine must be frozen!
Doesn't start, but turns over, and trying to bump it gets some productive coughs.

The story ends with me buying the bike and feeling like a thief. As far as I can tell, the guy just left it sitting for a few months and got busy with other stuff (the man had like 8 foxbody Mustangs). So I'm basically sitting around waiting for the other shoe to drop, and trying to figure out how you go about starting a motorcycle that doesn't want to be started.

I'm finding out that even though I know a lot about cars and their engines and ECUs and whatever, bikes have some kind of special juju magic that eludes me. I have a few friends that are helping out, but I'm sure to appreciate any help and/or insight from the members of this forum.

Incidentally, I'm in La Honda, California. Any of yous guys around Alice's/35 on the weekends? (some of you must be, there are like 1000 bikes out there every sunday.)

 

Welcome to the board!

I don't know much about the older gen bikes, but I'm sure a carb clean, charged battery, and fresh gas would be a good place to start.

 

Oh yeah. That would make more sense. Step 0.5, ignore my suggestions.

 

Makes sense to me.

I got my timing light on all four plug wires, got good flashing out of that. Obviously not as good as plug-out testing, but I figured I'd be replacing these plugs as a matter of course anyways.

Carbs don't seem to be stuck from what I can tell, but I'm relatively new to carbs. The only other vehicle I own that has them doesn't run yet.

Air filter is pretty recent and not clogged with dirt or oil.

I had the battery on the charger overnight on 2A, but I'm thinking I might replace it with a gel bat anyways, since it's old and tired.

Near as I can tell, I've got fuel, spark, and air. I'm still thinking that I might want to take the carbs out and give them a once over. I was looking at some freaky brass tabs that are over some phillips head screws under the air filter assembly - please tell me that those aren't how the carbs come out.

Gonna get a manual for this bike. Thanks for the warm welcome, guys.

 

I kind of figured that the carbs shouldn't be removed from the plenum, after looking at it a bit more. Those folding tabs sort of remind me of something BMW does on the big nut that holds the wheel bearing in on the 3 and 5 series. Clearly something you should replace if you're going to take it off.

Thanks for that link! Things like this keep me from destroying the things I own.

Another thought I've just had is that this previous owner might have put on new plug wires and not hooked them up to... the right plugs. Dumb, but something I'm going to check out.

 

Welcome aboard