Smooth as silk

[JoeKanuck]

Good day. I just got my '86 back on the road after some major carb transplantation. I had 2 carbs with hopelessly seized low speed jets so I got a set of 4 from thirdbike and frankensteined a set out of the 8.

 

The floats were perfect and as it turns out, the needles he sent were different than mine...with a longer and shallower taper. They were also set to their max rich setting.

 

I put on some new diaphragms on the best of the slides, left it at max rich and bolted it back together.

 

Holy crap...what a bunch of nasty noises when I started it up...I did a balance, set the low speed jets by ear and now it's running better ever. With the needles set rich, I don't have the bogging with the filter out anymore since more gas needs more air. Some previous owner had drilled some holes in the air box lid and then covered them up with tape...I took off the tape and no bogging. I was planning on trying this experiment for some time and this was a good opportunity.

 

The bike has more power than before, smooth from idle to redline, no dead spots, no more popping at idle, leaner at idle, (less raw gas stank), and I don't even need the choke anymore when it's cold.

 

Basically it goes like a scalded rabbit. I could probably lean it out for a bit but instead, I'm going to try supply even more air and put that extra gas to good use.

 

I'm getting about 32 mpg, (us gallons), but it runs so damned good that I think I'd rather eat the couple of extra bucks than chance screwing with the goodness of the engine. I added a couple of huge wind deflectors to the fairing so that will have dropped the mileage a bit.

 

Someday I maybe even change the plugs.

 

So if your bike is running somewhat rich, maybe try giving the engine more air as a first resort...it working great for me.