Recently finished putting Alda back together and fired her up for the first time in my ownership.  Hadn't been run for probably at least two years.  I did not mess around with engine, but everything else.  Supposedly it ran well before being dumped and then sitting for a year or more before I bought it last year.

She will start up, in fact reasonably easily.  However, she's burning oil.  I spotted some oil leaking out where the headers meet the gatherer to the muffler/silencer.  I haven't isolated which one (or more) yet.

So, what would you start with?

FYI, I have not overfilled oil, bike's only been on center stand.

How many miles?  Have you pulled the spark plugs to look at them?  What do they look like?  How much smoke?

Piston rings can stick from lack of use. Either run some high detergent oil through the bike for a hundred miles or so then change back to your preferred brand. Or just run it, they will sometimes free up with use. A  mates brick was a heavy smoker but it eventually settled down.
Regards Martin.

Bike has, I believe, a little over 100K miles.

I checked spark plugs and it looks like PO changed them in his effort to get the bike running.  Of course, that wouldn't have done much good without an operable fuel pump.  Plugs hadn't been gapped correctly, as they were all considerably over .6mm.  I shortened the gaps to about .53 - .55 and stuck them back in.  I didn't notice any appreciable difference.

I do hear the timing chain underneath the valve cover.  Not sure how audible that is usually.

I posted a video to youtube ( https://youtu.be/e_kXFCKR2r0 ).  Smoke is worse as it warms up.

Cheers,

Frey

FreyZI wrote: Plugs hadn't been gapped correctly, as they were all considerably over .6mm.  I shortened the gaps to about .53 - .55

The specs allow a gap from 0.6 mm to 0.9 mm. Less than 0.6 mm isn't specified.

Laitch wrote:

FreyZI wrote: Plugs hadn't been gapped correctly, as they were all considerably over .6mm.  I shortened the gaps to about .53 - .55

The specs allow a gap from 0.6 mm to 0.9 mm. Less than 0.6 mm isn't specified.

Yeah, the other day when I was looking for the piston ring gap specs I noticed that in the Haynes manual the spark plug gaps specs are wider.  I can't remember which resource I used that said 0.5 to 0.6.  If I find it, I'll note it here.  Incidentally, the head is off and the pistons are out, so I'll widen the plug gaps while everything is open.

FreyZI wrote: Incidentally, the head is off and the pistons are out, so I'll widen the plug gaps while everything is open.

I suggest you replace the current plugs with new plugs that are gapped correctly.

PO put the plugs in as low hanging fruit.  They've only seen a few minutes of action.