Metrakit soft seize

As I was cranking along at a fairly high rate of speed at 2:30 AM on the Friday night of the Lafeyeti Rally, I was feeling pretty good about my Newport, until it soft seized. I initially thought I just hit a cool, dense pocket of air, because the bike has been really consistent for a few years now, but a comment that Responsible Jon said made me rethink that. He said I should retard the timing a little bit. Hmmm...I haven't checked my timing for quite a while.

After watching Devin from MLM work on my Pinto timing, I realized I should probably consider buying a metric dial indicator. I picked this one up on ebay for about $40 shipped. I also grabbed the adapter setup from Motion Pro for about $20 shipped.



With the new tools I found out that my bike was setup for the spark to happen at 1.8mm BTDC. That's way too far advanced for an E50. I backed it off to just under 1.2mm and called it good. It was definitely nice having the proper tools for this.

After I finished that, I pulled the piston/cylinder off of the bike. This is what it looked like after 3 soft seizes during the rally. I definitely need a new piston.



I ordered up a new one from Treats...the next size up. I'm hoping to get it this week, so I can find a local machine shop to bore out the cylinder.