Finishing a 77 Yamaha XS750 CR Project

[ChiefKiefington]

What's up guys!? I'm new here. Hopefully I've got this in the right place. So I got thise bike off of a buddy of mine and knew it would need some work. I wanted something to wrench on...it's been too long! That being said my last bike was an '01 Ninja so once again I'm in a new world with this 77 cafe racer.

At first I couldn't get the bike to run without feathering the throttle so I took the carbs off and apart. The fuel inside wasn't too pretty.I cleaned them and all the parts well via chem dip. I found a bent air needle so I replaced that and a broken needle jet keeper in the middle carb and replaced that. I put it all back together according to specs in the

manual.

I then was able to turn it over and adjusted the idle adjustment until it'd hold it's own with my throttling. Then I found one pipe was hot and the others cold. I replaced all three spark plugs on that note and officially had my first crank (that we can record)! lol Anyways, on that, it was running rough...somewhat of a popping kinda noise coming through the back end of the exauhst accompied with small puffs of white smoke. I then started to hear a faint knocking....more of a ticking...coming from the foward part of the engine and had some white smoke up in the area as well. After, I cut it off, I wasn't able to crank it anymore. I'm curious if I've simply knocked more crud loose and should reclean the carbs or if my problem is deeper in the engine. I've gone about as far as I know to go and definitley don't want to spend hours on pointless projects so I decided I'd come here and get some help from the community here to hopefully make my process more efficient. Any and all help would be appreciated. Ive attatched some pictures as well. If there's any further questions that need to be answered I should be around! I gotta say...she sounded strong when I got her running with the new spark plugs in there!

 

[ChiefKiefington]

In addition, petcocks are new and I currently have pod filters instead of the airbox.

 

[pidjones]

IMHO (and just from what I've read as I have avoided this move), pods are not a good move when sorting a new engine. They require different jetting, usually. However, I doubt it causes white smoke. Did you check valve cleaarances? Also, bikee that have sat up for years have often become critter condos. Several of my rescues have blown clouds of nesting material and nut shells from the exhaust on their first few runs.

As an experienced co-worker once counselled me while on my first field repair; "Keep beating on it, you'll get it".

 

[ChiefKiefington]

Ya know, I've read the same as well! So I'm considering back tracking on that step. I thought I'd managed to sort it out with the pods on but then all of a sudden I couldn't get it running anymore! I like the words of encouragement reminds me of working with mechanics in Georgia! Thanks for pointing a finger at something for me, Imma check out the clearances as my next step. I was actually just reading up on that in the manual, doesn't seem to hefty a project! @pidjones