Should I be looking at my carbs? Or elsewhere

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20 Jun 2013 13:25 #593227 by whitbyrudie
Alright I have an 81 KZ 1000 CSR that is currently running great except for the fact that my fuel consumption sucks.

I checked a chart ( www.totalmotorcycle.com/MotorcycleFuelEconomyGuide/Kawasaki.htm ) and while it doesn't have my bike on there, I just used the specs for the 78 model, and I'm not getting anywhere near what I should be! With a 12 litre tank, city driving I'll get about 140 km to the tank so if my math is right we're looking at 8.57 litres for 100km which is a far cry from the speced 5.6

I'm guessing it's my carbs that would affect this? As far as I can tell the tank is solid and has no leaks in it what so ever, same with the fuel lines so I can only figure that it's the carbs. Now I recently tweaked the fuel mixture pilot screw on each carb (four of them in total) and they were a little wonky and mismatched, the lowest was 2 - 1/2 turns the highest was 3 - 1/2 turns. So I lightly set them all and played with them. They're all currently set to to 1 - 1/2 (screw is on the engine side, so from what I've read less turned out they are the leaner the mixture, feel free to tell me if i'm an idiot and enriched the mixture, i can take i put on my big boy pants today heh)

Since making this change, I haven't really seen much change in fuel consumption (this was a few weeks ago) I did have one good day that was all highway riding and I got 180 out of the tank but even that is only 6.66/100km which still isn't doing it for me, with 12 litre tank and those specs, I should be getting over 200km per tank.

So...
Thoughts?
and please don't tell me to ghost ride the bike off a cliff lol, I love this bike damnit! lol.

Cheers and thanks for the advice in advance.

81 KZ1000 CSR
Vancouver Canada

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20 Jun 2013 17:05 #593248 by baldy110
Replied by baldy110 on topic Should I be looking at my carbs? Or elsewhere
I don't know how your metric equations translate to SAE but I ride an ELR clone GPZ1100 engine. I get 160 miles and I run dry. My 78 KZ650 gts the same 160 miles and I am empty. If the bike is running fine I would not worry about it.

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20 Jun 2013 22:37 #593291 by JR
Do you have pods or air box ? I found fuel consumption for my 750 a bit better with air box . Having the fuel level in the carb bowls right on spec will help and then set the mix screws and synch carbs. Of course riding style will have an impact

1980 kz750E1, Delkevic exhaust

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21 Jun 2013 00:04 #593317 by whitbyrudie
Replied by whitbyrudie on topic Should I be looking at my carbs? Or elsewhere
To give you some perspective, 160 miles is 257 km, I'm getting about half that to a tank, or about 80-90 miles per tank
I haven't worried about it till now, the concern has been getting the bike running. Now that most of the mechanical problems are sorted I can focus on tuning it, because I figure I should be getting twice the mileage that I currently am, which means I'm spending twice as much as I should be for gas

81 KZ1000 CSR
Vancouver Canada

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21 Jun 2013 00:05 #593318 by whitbyrudie
Replied by whitbyrudie on topic Should I be looking at my carbs? Or elsewhere
I'll eventually be putting pods on, but at the moment, it's teh stock air box

81 KZ1000 CSR
Vancouver Canada

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