Rich running carb gremlins solved!

Post date: Sep 23, 2009 3:34:50 PM

The bike already had a Thunderjet kit in it when I bought it so I didn't have a way to take it back to stock configuration unless I wanted to replace all the jets. My other concern was the idle mixture screw had possibly been turned too tight into its seat and I wouldn't be able to fix that. So I shopped ebay for a used stock carb. Found one that claimed to be off a 98 FXR and the seller 'claimed' he had gone through it and all the seals were good. Well, buyer beware... it was in good shape and it was stock... so stock that the accelerator pump was original and disintegrated! I used one from my orig carb as a quick fix. I popped the idle mixture plug and backed it out 2 turns to start with. I went through the carb with cleaner and checked the jets: .042 lowspeed, .170 main. I set the float at .425. The results... no more richness! Living at 5200ft above sea level really reduces the amount of air in that fuel/air mixture. Even though I had the heads ported&flowed, increased the compression with some KB pistons and dropped in a EV27 cam I'm still running a 80cu motor. I think the Thunderjet kit was overkill. I still need to do some fine tuning but the richness issue has been solved.