500 timing

I once spent a day with an expert, kinda, adjusting pickup gaps to fix a sudden lack of off-idle power on my TL 600 Pantah, small world ha John. We played around with the bike jacked to the side changing these gaps for a good 10 hrs and, checking how the bike advanced. He had a set of brass feeler gauges to avoid the gauges sticking. This was madingly non-conclusive as there was a small change but not enough to fix the issue which was needing to slip the clutch like a hot 2 stroke to pull off the line. Eventually, the problem was fixed, and it turned out to be wildly out of sink carbs, I had been using my metal rod vacuum gauge and not physically checking the results, even vacuum doesn't necasarlty mean balanced slides apparently. The slides were out by at least 5mm. And that was it, at least 6 months of playing around and it was such an easy fix.
 
how would I check the pickup resistance
Disconnect the BTZ wiring plug from the ignition box. Set the multimeter to resistance and apply your test leads to the plug terminals that correspond to the black/black-white wires (they are the two adjacent terminals on the long flat side of the connector). This can be repeated at the pickup wiring connector block which (as standard) sits mid-way between pickups and boxes. (On triples this is around the back/top side of the crankcase). Compare readings for both pickups.

Given the wiring has been repaired, then polarity swap may well be the issue for the RH cylinder pickup - easily done!
 
Disconnect the BTZ wiring plug from the ignition box. Set the multimeter to resistance and apply your test leads to the plug terminals that correspond to the black/black-white wires (they are the two adjacent terminals on the long flat side of the connector). This can be repeated at the pickup wiring connector block which (as standard) sits mid-way between pickups and boxes. (On triples this is around the back/top side of the crankcase). Compare readings for both pickups.

Given the wiring has been repaired, then polarity swap may well be the issue for the RH cylinder pickup - easily done!
Thanks Rob.
Will check as soon as I have a mo.

Paul
 
Got there, sort of.
I inverted the wires from the right hand pickup and bingo. When I recently put the bike together again, I followed colour coding on the wiring, I shouldn't have.
I tinkered around to get the timing as close as possible. Tickover is at 8° advance around 1200 revs. Bike starts from cold with choke and at a touch of the button whereas previously we needed to catch it when it fired by pulling on the choke.
Full advance appears to be retarded at a constant 3300 revs but if I blip the throttle, it advances spot on.
I left it at that.
It now appears, timing being ok, that I need to go back to carb tuning.

Many thanks to all who gave me precious tips to sort this problem out.
I can now look after my bikes, notably the Falcone which is pissing quite a bit of oil from the lower tappet cover and the oil feed pipe.

Paul
 
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