Issue link: http://trailridermagazine.uberflip.com/i/807546
March/April 2017 37 cial starting proce- dure. First, you prime the engine by giving it five to eight slow kicks with the choke on. Second, you push the kick start to TDC (Top Dead Center). Third, the kick start needs to catch the gear pointing straight up. You can help accomplish this by mounting the kick starter farther for- ward than normal. Fourth step is to use the compression release. It 's not pos- sible to start this bike without using it. However, you cannot just pull the release lever; you must only pull it exactly half way. This provides the max- imum decompression and air flow. Pulling it all the way down compresses the spring completely such that little air flow occurs and it can become impossible to start the bike. Lastly, just KICK IT! After a year of work, the bike started up and seemed to run fine. This engine that was full of dirt and may be the only 660 left started up and ran again. Now that it was complete, it was time to take it out. Its first time out would not be on the trails but in a motorcycle show. The bike was on display at the One Motorcycle Show 2017 in Portland, OR. The weekend after the show I took the bike out for its first ride. It started fairly easily and hit the trails. Lots of low end grunt and it just idles up trails like a mon- ster. The front end easily pulls up just tapping the throttle. There was a prob- lem, though. The bike never seemed to warm up; the entire time it ran as if the choke was still on. I attempted to adjust the air screw to see if that made any difference. Three turns out and it actually seemed to make it worse! A few possibilities came to mind. Obviously, the first one is the jetting. The carburetor is a Bing 55 Gold Cup and the jetting is simply stock for a modern Maico 700. I I'm sure it probably needs some adjustment but could it be this far off? Then why would the air screw make it worse leaning it out? The second possibility would be the power valve sticking. After all, the low end seemed to run decent; it was just when you started to scream the bike that you noticed the problems. The last possibility, and the one I was most afraid of when I put the bike togeth- er originally, was the air filter. I couldn't use the air box because the boot was too small to fit around the carburetor and the space is so small I couldn't come up with a good solution to adapt it. The carburetor is right up against the rear shock on one side and the