I got this 1995 Triumph Thunderbird 900, non running condition. Overall in not a pretty condition. There was a battery acid spill, the front forks are both leaking from the seals, one muffler has a hole and other things.
After a few adjustments, it would finally crank but not fire. Using starter fluid it fires up after some time, but still not right and on its own.
I replaced the ignition coils and checked/did the valve clearances. The intake side was very tight. Also, one of the carb bodies was damaged. There is a small tube on the outside of the carb and it was broken off and sealed by a previous owner. Once this was replaced, the bike would fire and idle much better.
Someone put an acid battery in the bike and topped of the acid. This led to an acid spill on the right side of the motorcycle. Even though there is cosmetic damage, nothing else was affected. The acid ate into the plastic housing of the ECU.
Once that one carburetor body was swapped out, the bike idled fine but still did not start without bigger efforts. I cleaned the choke/enricher circuit and made sure those thin tubes are clean. After this job, the bike fired up almost immediately.
Doing an oil change, I realized that the previous owner had put way too much oil into the bike. After replacing filter and refilling to the specified amount, the bike started up on first push of the button. So it currently looks like that the amount of oil made it more difficult to start, just another thing that added to the difficult start behavior.
Now that the bike is sorted and running, the owner wants to customize a little. Led strip in back for running, brake and turn signals. I also decided to chop the fender a little to expose the rear wheel. The three tail light mounting holes will be covered by the license plate. I am also trying to get the spray paint off, one of the pics shows one of the mufflers where I removed paint. Entire bike needs a lot of detailing.
