Octane & Ignition advance

If you end up lowering the clips, once the carbs are back together on their "rack", dont take it for granted all the slides are still even, and if they are not dont worry about it because this time your gonna win with colors. Back off the idle stop screw all the way. turn it back in untill the slides move up slightly. check that they are all open the same amount. If any are not there will be a problem. Find something to stick into the space under the slide and check them all. Adjust carefully untill they are all the same. Work the throttle up and down again somewhat dramaticly. Let it down. All good? Your carbs are good to go. Dont forget to tighten the phillips screws that lock the little forks to the choke bar. Seat the idle air screws and back them out 1.25 turns each. Put them back on the bike and start it. Warm it some and set the idle stop screw so idle is at 1100. Go to any carb and seat the idle air screw. Idle will drop dramatically,thats good. Back it out slowly and note the idle picking back up. Near one turn out its going to start peaking, listen close and stop when you feel rpm is peak, usually this is 1.25 to 1.5 turns out. Dont go too far, you dont need to. Go to the next carb and repeat until you've done all 5, GOTCHA! That would be 4. For a good tune. Happiness is just over the rainbow, and sharing in Jesus Christ, and he showed me the way. Because i asked.

OK, Took the rack off at the weekend. I actually had #17.5 pilots and 115 mains in there so, replaced the #17.5's with some #20's and "went large" on the mains with 135's. They were lying around looking lonely.

Opened up the plugs to 37 thou, adjusted the timing chain tensioner, lifted the needles to slot #4 and set all the mixture screws at 1.25 turns out. Warmed her up and very carefully synced the carbs. All now within 1cm.

As an aside, someone (Ron?) had made mention a couple of weeks ago that the restrictors in the carb sync sticks should be as close to the inlet manifold end of the tubes as possible. So I pulled the tubes off the sync tool and reversed them all, thereby placing the restrictors at the carb end of the tubes. I believe this definately helped steady the "bounce" in the mercury.

All now running very nicely with just the very, very faint hint of a stumble/bog/hesitation at around 4,500rpm. But again, only at cruise, not when accelerating.

Plugs look a touch dark but definately brown on the center insulation, not black. Outside ring/thread is black.

I think we are 96% there.

Did you change the coil feed wire to a larger wire? 37 is huge for a plug gap. I wonder if that may be the hesitation. Try 25. The hesitation is on its way out. Lets will it out. Hey, what have you got to lose.

Hey Nads, I did the WG coil rewire last year and when I did it, I used 16ga wire to feed the coils.

Is this the coil feeds you're talking about?

Also ran it down to reserve yesterday and decided to try going back to 87 octane so, last night, I put a couple of gallons of 87 in.

This morning she ran without any noticable hesitation.

Maybe 87's the answer here?

BARNEYHYPHEN wrote:

OK, Took the rack off at the weekend. I actually had #17.5 pilots and 115 mains in there so, replaced the #17.5's with some #20's and "went large" on the mains with 135's. They were lying around looking lonely.

Opened up the plugs to 37 thou, adjusted the timing chain tensioner, lifted the needles to slot #4 and set all the mixture screws at 1.25 turns out. Warmed her up and very carefully synced the carbs. All now within 1cm.

As an aside, someone (Ron?) had made mention a couple of weeks ago that the restrictors in the carb sync sticks should be as close to the inlet manifold end of the tubes as possible. So I pulled the tubes off the sync tool and reversed them all, thereby placing the restrictors at the carb end of the tubes. I believe this definately helped steady the "bounce" in the mercury.

All now running very nicely with just the very, very faint hint of a stumble/bog/hesitation at around 4,500rpm. But again, only at cruise, not when accelerating.

Plugs look a touch dark but definately brown on the center insulation, not black. Outside ring/thread is black.

I think we are 96% there.

So much for changing one thing at a time:blink:

Its ok to have the switching wire 16 ga. but not the power suply to the relay or to the coils. For the power supply to the relay and too the coils should be 10-12 ga.

Post edited by: Snakebyte, at: 2006/05/31 10:17

Snakebyte, I hear you. I just got into it and decided a little fine tidy-up couldn't do too much harm. If I came out the other end of all that stuff and the hesitation was still there, it must be something else?

I think all those little bits had a positive effect and the cumulative result was a quieter somewhat better running bike. The change back to 87 octane seems to have resolved most of remaining very slight hesitation.

I think a coil feed wire beef-up to at least 12ga (I already fed the relay with 10ga) and a mixture screw tweek, this weekend, should get us to about 98.8%.

I'll report back when all done.

Thanks again everyone's help.

yer good at the the coils Barney as u know, but im wondering if the plug gap is too large? Maybe not. But?

Barn: its kind of scary that your clips are on the 4rth notch. Now that you have bigger mains and pilots, it may start showing sighns of running rich. Keep your eye on the plugs after highway driving to see. If it turns out its rich, raising the clip up one notch may put things in perfect tune. If anything, it may be strong since you have alot of gas now with the bigger jets. I have 26mm carbs and im running even bigger jets but a 17.5 pilot. The clip is in the middle. Just trying to say that there may be one more step here for you in the near future. Other than that good luck and carry on...

Nads.

Can't say I disagree with you on the "it must be running rich" thought. 4th noth, #20's and 135 mains but, I've been riding it back and forth to work each day this week (45 miles R/T) an' I gotta say i'ts running "real nyyyce".

Don't appear to be getting any "rich suggesting" smoke however, inside ends of the tail pipes are certainly black but, seemingly no more so than before I tweeked the jets. I do about 15 miles on I65 going home (70-80mph) so I'll pop the plugs when I get home and check them out.

I'll try to post some plug pix tomorrow.

As promised, pictures of plugs and one Exhaust tip. Sorry for the poor quality but you can get the idea.

I'll try the Exhaust again!