TT600R renovation - Part 3 - it lives!

Once we'd moved house I had better facilities to work on it regularly, so could focus my attention on making it go. With the new CDI fitted I decided it was time to give it a good kicking. I could smell and see fuel was getting through now and finally, dripping with sweat from kicking it over, I got a backfire. I decided to be fairly bold and sprayed some easy start in through the vacuum take off on the inlet rubber in front of the carb, to take the carb out the equation. It wouldn't start but I could determine a slight burnt fuel smell indicating some combustion, so I knew it was getting a spark. I thought it was probably getting a spark anyway, but I couldn't do this basic test as was unable to kick it and properly ground the plug at the same time. Failing to do so would likely fry the new CDI - so I didn't try. Next, I sprayed some Easy Start in the air box and started to get the odd cough and squeak, definite signs of life. Then finally after 60 - 70 kicks and with me f**king knackered it fired! There was a fair bit of smoke as it kicked out 7 yrs of accumulated crap and it stopped after a few seconds, but nonetheless it lived! I was learning how to kick the thing as well, from feel and what I'd read on forums, so I was pretty pleased. It wouldn't run without the choke out (another tell tale sign I should have noticed), but nonetheless it worked.

Over the next few weeks I got it running a few times, but noted that it gave some fairly vicious kick backs. It did it once when I wasn't wearing a steel shanked MX boot - I never did that again afterwards. I got it out and took it for a brief ride to check the clutch and gearbox worked as expected. Everything seemed OK, but the engine wasn't happy, feeling lumpy, not wanting to tick over and not very lively. Then one day, it kicked back so violently when I went to start it, it destroyed the kick start mechanism and punctured a hole in the clutch cover where the kick start smashed its stop and continued into the casing. At this point in time I wasn't too confident about taking the clutch cover off. Seems stupid now, but not really knowing what was inside and thinking it would also mean changing the auto decomp I wasn't keen. So off to the local workshop it was.