Routine Maintenance: sparkplug cleaning
Ok, so I had to clean my sparkplug, a little routine maintenance. So, I thought I would drop a video (above) to show you how I clean them.
I've ran it through winter, spring and the start of summer a good six months or so and although it starts fine I noted that the bike isn't always starting as good on the button (starter motor) as it was, it started to take more than the one press or so with the choke out on a full battery. Although it was starting it. Every now and then it would have a cow trying though. Yeah, it could be that my starter motor isn't brilliant, it does sound a bit lethargic and not as high pitched as others, kind of like it's not got much energy and Peters out regardless of a full charged battery (the voltage meter does drain right down after a single press anyway, so that may be normal) but, there is never a problem with the kick. The button usually starts it straight away on my afternoon ride home but, it's first thing it has troubles with. Maybe it's a fuel in the carb issue? There's already some left over from my morning ride which is easily ignited but come following morning it's mostly evaporated away, so it has to have more fed into the carb again? I've already noted that if the bike is left standing for a day or two or more it's more of a pain to start as you need to get the fuel flowing through the system again.
With that I thought maybe the spark plug is a little dirty? A clean plug will help with better ignition regardless and six months would be a good time to check it. Yes, you could just buy a new sparkplug they're not exactly expensive however, there's not much point when nothing's wrong with the one you have and it's just a bit dirty. Besides there may come a time when you need to clean a plug because you need to use the bike later on that day and you can't buy a new sparkplug for the bike (because you need the bike to get to the store) or it won't arrive until a few days later. Obviously if your sparkplug is cracked or damaged beyond repair you will have to buy a new one.
I clean my sparkplugs by using a copper wire brush disc on a spindle connected to my mains drill and sped up at high RPM clean the tip / electrodes of the spark plug with it, making sure I get right in underneath the electrodes. I find this better than the emery cloth / board method as it's less abrasive / destructive and doesn't leave particles on the end of the plug which will get into the engine if not cleaned properly. We use copper and not steel wire because it's not as hard. The steel wire may gouge and scratch up the sparkplug electrodes. When it comes to the Iridium plugs like the main one here, they have a tiny electrode that could just be destroyed with anything else. Before I do this I spray the tip with WD40 and let it settle to loosen up any carbon build up.
When I removed the Iridium plug I noticed some black carbon build up and also the plug looked as though things were running a tad rich. This means there is more fuel to air in the ratio mix. Might indicate that the tick over is a touch too high still as well.
When all was clean and put back into the engine it fired up fine.
