It runs!

It finally runs! I first tried if charging the battery really full would help. That didn't seem to do too much. Already yesterday I had tried rotating the distributor 180° but that hadn't helped. So maybe the two things together did the job. The distributor is really quite stupidly done. Maybe for a reason but I can't understand why. The distributor fits in the right most gear in the photo on the left. As you can see the gear has a straight indent in it. The distributor fits there in two orientations. As far as I understand the distributor rotates once for every two rotations of the crankshaft. We want a spark only every four strokes after all. With the distributor 180° off phase I was probably getting the spark at TDC which started the intake stroke. No wonder the engine couldn't run. However this is when all the dots align on the gears. Both on the ignition side at the bottom and valve timing side at the top. So I assumed the the spark should also occur at this TDC and adjusted the distributor timing to happen at exactly TDC as for this 450 cc model the static timing should be exactly at 0° TDC. The distributor has a mechanical system to advance the timing at higher revs.

Anyways, The engine runs and I took the bike for a short test drive around the block. It was wonderful!