Rev It Up!

The motor has plenty of oil in the sump, but since it has been sitting for 6 years in a garage I decided to put some freshy in it. Most motorcycles require special oils because the transmission is integral to the motor, and needs some additives to make the clutch work correctly. 
On these old BMW boxers, the transmission is a separate unit with its own lubrication, so I can use standard 20w50 oil. After a quick oil change, I popped the new battery in its spot and rolled the bike out to the driveway to see if I can start her up!

I cranked it for a couple of minutes with NO success. WTF? You need 3 things for an engine to run: fuel/air, compression, and spark. If you have those 3 things, it should run. 

Time to troubleshoot. I pulled off the spark plugs and cranked it over to verify I have spark - no problem. I covered the plug hole with my thumb to see if I have at least a little compression - no problem. Must be something with either the fuel, air, or the mixer (carbs). Everything went together alright with the carbs, so those should be ok. Let me take a look at this fuel tank again - am I getting any flow? Nope.

Fuel flows out of the petcock, but not to the carbs. The only component in the middle is a fuel filter. It was apparently doing its job and caught some rust from the last time it ran, and was goobered up. Using a little compressed air and a poker, I cleared it out. Now I have flow to the carbs. Whew. Glad it was an easy fix.

Back to cranking: I could definitely tell it was trying to start, but just couldn't quite do it, so I pulled off the inlet from the air cleaner and sprayed a little starting fluid in there. Crank, crank, vroom, vroom!!!

I got it running!!! 

It's been a long time since I was so excited about something that I was jumping up and down laughing like a little kid.
Oh, yeah!