Taking care of business

I have been spending more of my time posting my comments on  forum then my journal so here are some highlights:

Still going out every morning on desert rides alone on my 450x and Z400 quad but also with willing neighbors on occasion as you have seen.

I recently came upon a man in a new community who built a train set in his front yard and and showed me how it worked. I was impressed with all the detail as you can see.

As some of you know I needed and finally got the exhaust vales adjusted on my 450x. I will spare you the details since they have already been posted but here are some important points not mentioned.  Before checking clearances of the valves and decompressor, 3 point alignment of  TDC (Top Dead Center) is crucial as parallax can cause TDC to be off by as much as 5 degrees.
(1) Alignment of the crankshaft hole primary drive gear and right side case index marks shown in red with parallax illusion but aligned.
(2) Alignment of the cam sprocket and  cam holder marks shown in red.
(3) MOST important alignment of the timing hole flywheel and left crankcase cover marks shown in red allows for view with  NO parallax illusion as the view is head on.
After the work was done, checked and re-checked, the bike would not start for what seemed like no apparent reason. Finally finding out that the  gas tank valve had snagged and removed a connector from the ignition coil as seen in red but at the time unnoticed. Just goes to show that no matter what your skill level there are always little unrelated things like this that can frustrate a job.