July 29th

Today I borrowed a simple compression guage to run a compression test. visit http://dansmc.com/compression_test.htm if you want to know how it is done. As it turns out the right cylender reads about 125+psi which is good. The left cyclender would not read over 75psi, even with several tries. A minimal amount of pressure is 100 psi, so this is definently a problem. With this amount of compression, the engine will never funtion how it is supposed to. The metal slotts on the head are broken in sever places, leaving me to believe that the bike, or at least the engine, was in some kind of accident. On the negative side, I will now have to remove the head, replace the gasket or even the whole head. It is comforting to know that it is unlikely that the previous owner would be able ride it long enough to break anything else, meaning that the carburator and the ignition system probably work.