1994 Honda XR250L Ignition Problems??

[insaneV4Honda]

I recently helped a friend out that has this bike. He ran it without any oil and the piston seized in the cylinder. I guess since I have a few older Honda V4's, I am now considered the "Honda man" where I work. Anyway, I told him I would look at it and see if I could help him out. Once I got it apart, I was able to recondition the cylinder and I replaced all of the seized parts. I followed the book in timing the engine and valves and all seemed to be good. If you are familiar, when I rotate the crankshaft around, the lines on the cam chain sprocket line up with the top of the head at the same time the crankshaft is lined up with the "T" mark and the rotor. Now the book states that it doesn't matter whether the cam lobes are up or down during this process. Makes sense to me since it is a single cylinder. Anyway, I installed the cylinder head cover, set the valve clearance and tried to start it. It doesn't want to start, although it is making great compression. It is acting like the timing is 180 degrees out because every once in awhile, it will let out a loud bang out of the muffler. I've read the manual 3-4 more times to see if I've missed something but I just can't figure it out. When I got the bike, the decompression cable was broken and I didn't touch it when I reinstalled the cylinder head cover. I am just baffled at this point.

I know the internal engine timing is good because when I set the valves, the rotor was lined up on the "T" mark and all 4 rocker arms were loose indicating TDC on the compression stroke. To me, this tells me that the mechanical timing is good. I don't know if I've missed something regarding timing for the electrical side or not. Any insight or help is appreciated.

Sean