carb rant
 

so those who have followed my threads know how much shit ive been dealing with with my god damn carbs. i have a buddy whos a honda tech and hes had the bike 3 times fucking with the carbs. we were missing the pilots so i ordered some and off we went to get it re tuned. its always run a little off, stalling randomly, hesitating at mid rpm, burping farting popping, but he said it was as good as it would get, he said we needed to get stage 2 needles as the 5 shims on the stage 1 needles werent giving me enough fuel to solve my mid range hesitation. then a friend of mine bill came along and offered to take a look. bills a carb guy, the carbs were way the fuck out of sync. 1 full turn on the screw. immediatly she woke up and came to life. what a dream it was to ride thsi time, and we pulled all 5 shims out. dropped to the 5th position the second time we got into the bike and she ran even better and didnt hesitate. who would have though something as basic as syncing the carbs would cancel out the need for 5 fucken shims. leaning out the mid range leaned out the top end a little, turns out he used the right mains, 180 and 185, so we bumped it up to a 185 and 190 as she was running lean top end. but that still didnt explain why at idle shed randomly stall. i ddi the vent tube down mod that i was shown in another post and we decided to check the fuel screws. ok heres the kicker. dj suggested that at below 3000ft i believe it should be 2.5 turns out. mine were, ready for this, between 1.25 and 1.5 turns out. yeah, out to fucken lunch. so theyre set up right now at 2.5, the bike seems instantly more responsive at low throttle, and is alot snappier too. havent had a chance to ride it yet but wre syncing her tonite when i go to bills place.

what a fucken headache this thing has been. the carbs have been off the bike this year 3 or 4 times between me and bill and the bike has spent 3 weeks at the other guys place and he worked on it for hours at a time. my guess is had he synced the fuckers the need for all the extra shims wouldnt have been there. fuck me im hoping at this point shes running properly again. just getting frustrated with carbs right now, but the light at the end of the tunnel is bright now that bills been fucking with the carbs.

the good thing is, you are actively involved in tuning them. By the time you are done, you'll have those things figured out.

I don't think anybody's been through the process without lfiting the tank, removing the airbox, disconnecting the throttle cables, loosening the clamps, pulling the carbs, draining the floats, removing the bowls, checking the float level, changing the jets, installing the bowls, pushing the carbs down, tightening the clamps, connnecting the throttle cables, installing the airbox - not to mention removing the slides and shimming the needles, more times than he can count.

It's too bad you didn't know how badly out in the weeds the PO got. It would have made it easier to go step-by-step and bring it back. It sounds like you are getting close, now.

Yup.I'm getting pretty quick at removing the carbs now. Lol. How do I set the floats? One is off by about a mm

well its still pops a ilttle bit up top when i close the throttle and get back into her and pops lightly mid range now, so im guessing i may need to drop some more fuel out from the needles as she was running fine last night before we bumped the mains. oh the life. oh and it gets better, the clips on my hid are broken so the headlight randomly shuts off. its been fine till tonite. and guess what, shut off in the middle of the country in a corner i was hauling ass through. luckily i had my buddy infront of me and i followed his tail light. talk about a good time. ended up limping the bike home from what would have been a fantastic twisty run. shit just isnt going right. maybe the garage will catch fire and ill get to start again, lol

There's no adjustment for the float level on our carbs from what I've observed, while having them apart 3 times. I could be wrong, but that's my observation. The float linkage is plastic and the needle just slips into a slot in the linkage, no adjustment possible.

For anyone who's ever worked on carbs on cars/trucks...don't you just love Holley's for float adjustment?

Didn't you say she was running lean on top last night? Changing anything with the needles won't help the top end, since they should be all the way out up on top. How did you determine you were lean on top? Maybe try going back to the 180 and 185. When something is working well, then you change something and it doesn't work as well, it's best to go back one step.

And take a good look at the float you say is out of spec. Compare it closely with the other float.

I just checked my Honda service manual, and it says..."The float cannot be adjusted. Replace the float assembly if the float is out of specification."

Float level is 16.6mm +or- 0.5mm (0.65" +or- 0.02")

why are you ranting at the carbs ? sounds like a mechanic problem to me.

tim

Haha yeah I should have titled it that.

I noticed when we pulled the shims off the needle and went to the 5th position the mid range cleared up and pulled smooth and hard but the thing would POP anytime is get on het hard and go to Redline. Even hesitate for a second when is get back on the throttle. But only when I went full throttle. Checked the plug and it was leaning towards being white so we went to a 185 190 setup. it seems a lot smoother but last night being fairly cold she was popping a little in the mid range. where as before it wasn't. I'm on the 5 th position for the clip dj says 4 th with a high flow exhaust. that's why I'm wondering of I should just drop one more position. I'm just getting frustrated with how poorly these carbs were set up before bill started teaching me about them and helping me work on them. guess in this case the kawi guy knows more about the Honda than the Honda guy lol