Engine In

I got the engine back from the machine shop on Saturday, and reassembled the bike.  The work from the machine shop is ok, I'm not blown away.  The welder messed up on Friday, and forgot a weld, thus I had to pick  it up on Saturday.

Sorry for the poor quality of photos, not sure where my camera is.

I was having problems starting. I kind of figured this due to me disassembling pretty much the entire bike and then putting it back together.  I went to O'Reily's Auto Shop and picked up some new sparkplugs and some liquid gasket to re-insert the Water Temperature Sensor.  While messing around with the bike, I noticed that the spark plug cable...not exactly sure what the name is, but it's the wire shown below, between 21131 and 21121, was loose.  I took it apart and noticed a primitive design.  It's just copper wire on the inside and both the sparkplug boot (21130) and ignition coil have a metal "screw" on the inside.   So you take the wire and "screw" it in to create a connection.

After I was able to get a consistent spark, I tried kicking it over a couple  more times. That's when I heard it, the bike started to come alive.  I was like Dr. Frankenstein.  In the beginning there wasn't too much, just a hint that the engine was trying to keep spinning. Nothing much, only around a half second. But when you kick the thing over 300 times you start to get a feel for it. This small accomplishment gave me some confidence to continue on.  I eventually got the bike to start and "run" although not very good.  The idle was off, the engine was sputtering and if i didn't stay on the throttle it would die.  But Atlast I have it "running."  I had to stop the engine running experiment prematurely due to coolant escaping from the water temperature sensor location.  I don't (hoping) think it's the weld, I think it's the fact that the water temperature sensor did not have any liquid gasket on it when I placed it into the head.  I went ahead and put it on, and it needs 24 hours to cure.

Hopefully I'll have some good news soon.