UTMC

I don't know what to say ...... ....

Go here http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=66024

I'll help you re-align your engine!!!!

Ach, ferfooksakes laddie!

This dude needs to refill his blinker fluid and tighten his muffler bearings!

OMG, I just noticed the cylinders of my V-Twin are separated by 60 degrees, not 90 degrees like a true Italian V2!

How do you think that happened?

There are countless details about the inner workings of an itnernal combustion engine the average corporate drone may be forgiven for not knowing. Although it is a shame to all the bearers of the sacred testosteron, there actually are people who do not know why a cylinder is hones in that wicked criss-cross fashion, and they cannot be judged for it. In today's world, knowledge of such things is shunned in favour of knowing how to install a harddrive or update a video driver.
However, the most basic knowledge about how the larger bits inside an engine look like and how they fit together, more or less, must always be any man's duty to acquire - espescially if the engine of one's own transport is concerned!
Shame on him! Shame! Shame!

...thats like saying you need to pull a Goldwings motor to pull the starter!!

Thats just cRaZY talk!!

I always wanted to install one of those Briggs & Stratton pull-start cords on the side of my Concours, with a spring-wound takeup reel for the cord deep inside the plastic. Wanted to see if one of my friends who never rode a bike before would try to pull start it.

Guess first you'll need about two jugs of headlight fluid and uh... three cans of elbow grease.

Wow.

/RM

I seem to remember Honda and others used to make mini-bikes and small scramblers that were pull-cord started....

Actually here in SA mini bikes are the latest fashion, every dealer has some of those useless thingies in the showroom. They come in race and chopper outfit. As far as I could determine they're all started by pull-strings.
That makes me think: wouldn't it be funny to replace my kicker with a cord? Pulling a 650cc engine to life could be a bit exhausting though

I've tried starting a 140hp Johnson outboard motor with a pull string once and it was a nightmare. It was not necessary, but we wanted to see if we could do it. Every attempt required wrapping the rope around the flywheel, bracing your feet against the transom and pulling with all you've got. Never started.

Pullstarting a real bike would probably require that one person sit on it while another pulls. Just try to imagine having your kickstarter upside down, and then attaching a rope to the end . . . that is probably more leverage than you would get off of any kind of flywheel and it would still be extremely hard to do with one hand.

As for the Beemer dude. . . . you've gotta learn somehow, eh?