Thank you Dane

[tlanders]

At the recent ISDTRR and at the last two check points on Sunday, my Piner was very hard to start after I shut it down for a few minutes. I had to push it to start it for the 5 lap grass track MX. This was new for my Piner. The Piner has ALWAYS been a one or two kick starter and has been very faithful for the last 5 years. At the awards ceremony I asked Dane if he thought my motoplat was finally dying. He said that it sounded like a grounding problem due to corrosion of the stator mounting plate bolts. When the corrosion gets hot, you lose your ground. He said to back out the bolts and screw them back in again and that would brake the corrosion and if I wanted to be doubly sure, run a separate ground wire from the stator mounting plate to the coil ground.

The next week I pulled off the stator mounting plate, polished it up with a wire brush, cleaned up the stator mounting bracket, wire brushed the six bolts, tapped out the six holes, wire brushed the seal holder the mounting plate bolts to, wired in the separate wire and put it all back together again. It took about two hours to do all this carefully. It worked. On the next weekend, at the Casey Cross Country, the Piner ran and started flawlessly.

Driving home from Casey I thought about the 1981 495 I bought in the summer of 2004. It was hard to start, but after it started and warmed up, if you stopped it, it was impossible to restart until it cooled down. I thought, maybe I just need to do the Dane fix to this one also. I did it that week, and it started on the 5th kick after not running for 1.25 years. I heated it up by digging trenches in the front yard, to the dismay of Rosemary (what a beast it is!!!!), then shut it off. It was hard to start (I think the compression is a little low even though I haven't taken the time to check it yet) but it did start again while still hot. Dane's fix worked again!!!

Thank you Dane for your help.

Teddy