Well, this afternoon I had loads of things to do but I decided to leave them and give my old '81 Yammy a bit of a run out. Since getting her about a year back I have done a few tweaking jobs and some minor repairs and adjustments and apart from some starting problems, possibly HT leads need replacing she has been running fairly well. I have not done any of the cosmetic or paintwork jobs yet.
Well after a 90 minute blast around the country lanes I bought her home and was fiddling around with the idle screw which like the electrics on this bike defy all the laws of physics and logic. Whilst doing this I noticed that the old girl had decided to mark her territory with a couple of drops of oil.
As the concrete is fairly new and pristine I made a strong solution of washing-up detergent and hot water to slosh away the freshly dropped oil. Having done so I still had half a bucket left. One the engine casing there are some very old unsightly black and brownish stains where fluids have run in the past and a simple accumilation of muck and oil. I had spashed the engine when washing away the oil and the water boiled on contact as the engine was still very hot so just out of curiosity I washed the casing over with a stiff nylon brush and lo and behold 90%+++ of the marks have gone, dead easy, no effort. When I first got the bike I had tried "Gunk" and some other (expensive) proprietry solution with no affect whatsover despite chemicals and a lot of effort.
I thought I would share this if there are any restorers out there or anyone with a mucky engine, hope it works for you, if not at least you get the pleasure of the ride to get the bike well hot!.
COOL! I've gotta try that