couple of questions about spark (or lack of)

[psycoreefer]

10,000 bonus points to petejw. It must not be firing because it's so darn rich.

Just put the coils with new wires on and it made no difference. I put a plug in the wire and nice even blue spark. I'm sure the new wires are helping but still not firing on that #4.

I guess I'll have to pull the carbs again. Maybe I got some dirt in there the last time I adjusted the floats or something.

I was really hoping that it was an ignition problem, I've been chasing this darn carb problem for a few days. Oh well.

[petejw]

stick with it,
there frustrating at the best of times.

sounds like u might have a
blockage in the air passages/jets,
take the carbs off again
and blow out jets and passages
and recheck fuel height.
then c how u go

just curious about the history,
was this just sumthing that happened
when u were riding or was it as a result
of some work being done on the bike.

[psycoreefer]

I've had a few threads...
recap:
I got the bike with no 1st/2nd gear, fixed that, went for a ride and it was super super rich at idle but ran fine above 3.5k. Went to clean them and found 3 of 4 pilot jets were striped out, unable to remove them. Got a rebuild kit, then found a hole in one of my floats, tried to soilder it and ruined it. Replaced all floats with new plasitic ones from mikes Xs. Ran ok at idle and cuise but had a bad mis above 5k. Found out new needles had a significantly different taper then the old ones, put the old ones back in. Through all of this all four plugs have been even, then all of a sudden after putting the old needles back in only #4
is super rich. Thats why I suspected some other issue.

Through all of the above I've gotten to where I can take the carbs off, adjust them, and put them back in about 30min. Vacume Synced several times, I've been messing with the idle mix screw on #4 and even all the way closed its to rich to fire.

Only thing I can guess is that maybe some dirt got in when I had them apart to put the old needles back in, I also adjusted the float hight to 26mm at that time so its possible some dirt got in the bowl on #4. Either that or I suppose that after the last adjustment #4 float could be hanging up on something but it doesn't overflow.. on the bench or on the bike.

[petejw]

join the club
ull b pulling them off blind folded. :-)

youve done well to get it this far.
so am i right in saying u have good colour
with the rest of the plugs,
could u have mixed up the needle in no4,
just out of curiosity how is the diaghram?
wen u say the jets were stripped,
how did the new one screw in?
the idle jet on these carbs can affect main jet
performance as well.
the floats u replaced the old ones were plastic or brass?
also thinking if the bike is bogging down its more
than 1 cylinder being affected.

[psycoreefer]

Blind folded right... I've already impressed my dad by taking them off one handed while holding my 1year old son in the other arm/hand.

Color is Ok, perhaps a touch light on the other three but I'd like to get it running on all four before I focus on getting the nice tan color.

I had thought that maybe I didn't change #4 also but I checked and the needles in the "parts" box are all the new needles. I'm sure #4 has a needle in it so it must be an original one. I am beginning to wonder if maybe I got that big plastic washer under the clip instead of on top of it some how but I can't believe I'd do something so obviously wrong. Guess I won't know till I get them apart again.

Diaphragms are good, checked visually and by lifting slide then placing my thumb over the hole on the front of the carb, slide stays up until I remove my thumb.

By striped I meant that the PO had used a screw driver that didn't fit the jet and rounded out the slot so I had to use and easy out to remove the old pilot jets. New jets screwed in just fine.
New jets seem to be an exact match to old jets.

The new floats are all plastic from Mikes XS, the original floats were brass.

The bike doesn't really bog down. It actually doesn't run to bad but it lacks a bit of power because I'm pulling a dead cylinder around with me. I'm pretty confident that its only the #4 cylinder I'm having trouble with at this point.

[psycoreefer]

an update....

well I haven't ridden much but idle looks better. What I did was pull the carbs, and take everything apart on number 4. Didn't see anything wrong except possibly something in one of the side holes on the idle jet. Couldn't really tell if it was dirt or just some liquid gas inside but it came out with a little air. I'll report back again after I ride to work tomorow.