all it does is spit puff of white smoke through the carbs.

[oseaghdha]

Slow Down

Before this gets derailed into a gas thread.............

The easiest thing to right now is check the compression.
If thats ok, no immediate need to pull the valve cover.

[boyat68]

DGXSER;

I believe that what was cited was the lower octane fuel is more volatile since it has less retardant aka octane, therefore it explodes hotter, producing more heat turned into power with a lower compression engine. The cited reason for adding octane to the other two parts of gasoline, (Heptane and Hexane) is to slow the burning rate, reducing the premature combustion (dieseling) of the mixture.

[CatatonicBug]

OK..I'll bite. How in the haties does ANY engine run better on lower octane fuel? Even the 70s engines run ALOT better with Higher octane fuel from my experiences.

No picking on you Bug, this is at least the second time I have seen this posted and it has been bugging me (no punn intended).

I have to be honest, before I looked into it today, I had no real personal backing for my statement. Only the knowlege passed down to me by my dad, and others in the field. I went looking, and found the below article, quoted from "Scientific American". Basically, our engine is a simple one, and cannot benefit from the increased octane rating. It will still work just fine, but with no added benefits.

"Most modern cars, however, are designed to employ a specific compression ratio, a measure of how much room is available to the fuel when the piston is at the bottom and the top of the cylinder. This compression ratio—somewhere in the neighborhood of eight to one—tolerates lower octane fuels (such as regular gasoline, good old 87 octane) without knocking. "The compression ratio is fixed by the designer of the engine," Green says. "The regular fuel will burn properly and the premium fuel will burn properly and therefore there is no reason you should pay the extra money." High-performance engines, such as those in some sports cars or older, heavier automobiles, often boast much higher compression ratios. These cars—for example, Shepherd's Subaru WRX—require premium gasoline and will definitely knock without it. "I have to put the 92 octane in," he says. "It has a turbocharger.""

[cywelchjr]

I did some experimenting, and what I found was interesting. With premium higher octane gas, my milage goes DOWN. The is the opposite of what I got with my Camaro, and the primary difference is that my Camaro has a knock sensor and will advance the timing further with higher octane. So, you can use higher octane and take advantage of it IF you advance the timing for it, but then your stuck with the higher octane gas all the time.

If your engine doesn't ping with the lower octane, then there is NO need for the higher octane, your wasting both your money AND the gas (as you MUST have earlier spark to fully burn and take advantage of the slower combustion of the higher octane gas).

[Thee_oddball]

i have been looking through my manual for answers and googling "puff of white smoke through the carbs" and a few times there have been a mention of the crank case breather being clogged and to much oil in the crank case...which i think would mean blow by into the burn chamber causing the white smoke and fouling the plugs so it wont run, of curse there could be delayed detonation from bad coils,broken wire, lose ground ...etc...wish i could be of more help

[petejw]

Whoride,
Have you redone the compression check? What did you get?

With regards to premium vs regular, what ive found if the carbs are running
on the lean side or the engine has a higher compression ratio ie the big bore kits the premium makes a difference.
If the carbs are running on the richer side of things then ive found premium makes no differrence.
I run premium and notice an overal difference.

[DGXSER]

Did not mean to derail the thread, thanks for the feedback all! Somethings just knaw at me, and that was one of them.

[whoride76]

Learning by mistake after mistake

Will just to update everyone i figured out my problem with the bike. After taking off the carbs and cleaning every single part and reinstalling them, it was the timing bolt has loose and fractured the timing cover.

So when your bike is running good all night and you turn on to your street and loose all power and cant get it started in the morning and white puffs of smoke pop out of your pod air filters----Check to see if the timing bolt come out!!

Thanks for you ideas
I am going to repost and show pictures of her now that she is feeling better.