Poor old Skorp got left for 18 months while I had a torrid (but ultimately unsatisfying) affair with a Yamaha Virago V-twin ..... (looked good, promised a lot - but never really delivered like the Skorp...) Today I decided to resurrect the MZ and get back to riding a proper bike.
I did all the right stuff before laying her up (steady on chaps - the Skorp, not the Yam tart ) I drained the carb, raised the bike off the ground, made sure the engine ingested a little 2-stroke premix before final shutdown (to coat the barrels with oil) etc and then stored her away in a dry garage for a year and a half under a breathable cover.
Today I gently pulled her from her cocoon, drained down the oil tank and crankcase, cleaned out the filters, refilled with fresh semi-synth and squirted a little engine oil into the plug orifice. Then, with the battery fresh off its holiday on the Battery Mate, I the spun the engine over sans plug for a few minutes to get fresh oil circulating around the stressed bits like the cam lobes. After the checking the radiator coolant level and refilling with fresh petrol, I hit the starter, and she started up on the third revolution of the motor - strongly ..... but oddly.
It sounds weird .................... but she sounded sort've flat.
Back in the days of my old manually advanced/retarded Nortons and AJS's, I'd have said the timing was too far retarded - and this sounds just like that. The exhaust note sounds like a flat bark, rather than the muted cough that is the 660's signature. She spat and coughed for a minute or so and, after running for a 10 minutes (after she'd calmed down a little) I went to wipe some oil splashes off the tail end of the silencer - and the cloth melted on the hot metal .... THAT'S never happened before - the bike's always run rather cool - and then the fans cut in after a few minutes of running.
Now give me an old fashioned magneto and I'm home and dry - but the timing on the Skorpion's solid-state is it not?
Is there some way in which the solid state timing can go wonky? If so, what does one do next?
Or is it something else I'm not seeing ................... ??????