Natasha lives once more.....and she gets a farkle

It was tough, but managed to wait till the stroke of noon before firing up Natasha to see if I'd gotten ride of the squeaking noise caused by a gap between the front engine cover and the engine case.

Success! No squeak and she ran quite smoothly during the whole test ride. Good power and acceleration, in fact, she seems a little peppier now without an alternator robbing some power from the cam shaft timing gear! : )

Looking like surgical scars, you can see where I put high temperature RTV sealant to ensure no further "air gaps"

Yep, kind of messy looking, I'll be trimming and cleaning up the excess soon enough

I took her out for about 18 miles of riding. Now that I am running Natasha on a TLS or Total Loss System in terms of ignition, I am trying to track voltage use on Natasha. I started out with 13.5, ended the riding for the day at 12.5. I was using my low beam headlight.

Natasha ran great! I went to the small hilly area I like to pose my motorcycles by when close to home:

Nice clear sunny day today, you can see Denver's skyline and the mountains

On the way out of the development, I spotted this dirt road leading to the top of a small hill, I couldn't resist. Up we went, Natasha and I, and here she sits on top of the hill.

The photo doesn't really show the slope of the hill

I went by Andre's house for him to listen to the engine, he seemed pleased with the results though he thought one of the valve clearances on the right jug was a bit loose. I'll be checking that in the morning.

Once I got home, I drained the oil I'd put in while working on Natasha this past week. The color of the oil was still almost new looking. However, the metal particles I found when wiping the drain plug and saw in the oil filter cap made me glad I flushed the oil! No big stuff but I'll be flushing the oil about a week from now you can be sure of that.

The sparkly stuff is metal particles, whether left over from the old timing gears or the new ones "breaking in" remains to be seen, I am hoping its the former.

I took apart the oil filter and you can see its a good thing I swapped it out so early after installation.

Once I was done with the oil change on Natasha, I gave Natasha a new farkle as her "welcome back among the living" present. It was a voltmeter I'd bought on Ebay last week to monitor the drain on the TLS battery.

As the connection point, I used the power leads for the alternator warning light which is lit all the time now since the alternator is not hooked up. It's the nearest white connector in the picture above

Above is the indicator before I removed it.

Here's the voltmeter mounted in place of the warning light in the previous picture.

I also rigged the ground wire for the low beam headlight to be grounded at one of the handlebar mounting points. I'll probably eventually rig a fulltime on/off switch so I can turn off the headlight when running low on battery so I can make it to home or somewhere I can plug the battery charger into for a quick charge.

So a great day for all concerned. I managed, with enormous amounts of help and expertise from Andre and online sources, to disassemble a motorcycle way past the point I'd ever done on any motorcycle....replace the timing gears successfully....put everything back together and actually have it work! Andre, if you're reading this, you're the reason this repair job went so well! Thanks!