Cold #1 exhaust

[Bartman]

I was laying in bed last light and thought the same thing about gas eroding any fix that I would do. I will look at the spring as you said. If you have a broken tipped needle laying around can you use it now? Does it need a sharp point any longer since the hole is so large?

[bikerphil]

Some fellas have ground the broken point down to a taper and that has worked. I have done it both ways before and it is not as critical as one would imagine. All that matters is finding the sweet spot where just the right amount of fuel passes thru. It helps if you have a colortune to see what is actually going on but it isn't necessary, you can check plug color.

[TopCatGr58]

Hey again Bart,

Okay, the Sport Bike fuseblock sounds good. The Gel Cell battery not so good! These machines need a decent battery to get the ignition system to behave properly. We've actually been discussing this in the No Spark ALL 4 thread, the minimum system voltage needed to get the TCI and coils to fire, etc.. You won't kill a replacement battery with doing your tuning and testing stuff....since you have a separate battery charger that you can use to freshen/top up a partially drained battery. SO....if you can afford ~$50.00 go to WALLYWORLD and get the bike battery they sell that fits our bike... it's the ES50N18LA3 .... see this link:
http://www.walmart.com/ip/EverStart-...ttery/16782697

Also READ THE INSTRUCTIONS....put it on your charger at 2 amps and let it charge overnight or for the duration that the instructions describe....this will ensure that the battery is charged for the first time to it's full capacity and that will help it be a stronger and longer lived battery!!!!

Phil has covered the carb issue, good luck. Keep at it!

T.C.

[Bartman]

OK, I put the fuse box on and also a solid copper 12 ga wire from the starter ground bolt to the battery cable bolt.

I used my drill press to turn a broken needle and I sanded it with various sandpapers and finger nail polishing pads to slightly taper the broken flat tip of the needle. I then put it into the #1 carb without a spring so I could see how far down it went. Used a black sharpie and counted the turns out so that when I put a cut spring with it I would know about where it should be.

I then put carbs and air box back on and this time put the volt meter on the battery. It read 11.78 without a load. Then when cranking it dropped down to 9.0 and then 8.78. I put the charger on to see if it would keep the voltage up. Nope!

SO, battery time. I want to get a gel cell. I doubt if the Walmart is that kind, do you know?

I looked on line for a few minutes and see battery with free shipping and a free charger for $89.97. http://www.powerstridebattery.com/mo...ery-ytx20hl-bs
How does that one look?
or a http://www.batterystuff.com/powerspo...TX24HL-BS.html
for $78

Tomorrow night I will hook up the truck and jumper the bike off until I get a battery.

I wonder if my old charger is really doing much to the gel cell that my brother gave me? I need to read up on those kinds of batteries.

[oldyam80sg]

If you have an Advanced Auto Parts store i bought a AGM battery from them.Not cheap but a really good battery.They are in both my bikes.Will run around $100.00.Forget Walmart-had maybe 3 batteries fail and they would not warranty them.

[Bartman]

Correction, I want an AGM battery.

[Bartman]

OK, with a truck battery for juice the old bike woke up, reving at 6K RPM. I checked and the idle screw was backed off and the cable was loose. I then started to turn the #3 sync screw and the idle started to come down. I had to go back and forth between #3 screw and the big center idle adjustment but after a while it seemed to be running fairly well. I had the old sync gages hooked up and was watching them. THey showed that the #1 and #2 were higher than the #3 and #4. I kept fiddleing with the #3 screw trying to balance them out. Go to far one way and it would stumble and not rev up. Currently it was reving and idleing good but at times still didn't want to idle down to 1200 RPM. (I don't trust the tach and I try to balance what I hear with what the tach says)

It has been a while since I put all four of the vacumn lines onto one cylinder and made sure that all four gages were reading the same. So I pulled and plugged the 2, 3 and 4 vacumn tubes and as I did the idle would drop, but when I unpluged the #1 to swap them out the revs would go up. Correct me if I am wrong but would that be sucking more air and reving up mean that the idle screw was still too rich? It seems to be running good but is popping out the exhaust when I let off. I did pull the #1 and #2 plugs, #2 was good looking and #1 had a slight amount of smut, but all 4 pipes are HOT!

I tried to do the propane test but that didn't work for some reason. My old handle leaks a lot and there really is no accurate way to tell how much propane is going in.

ANYONE want to loan me a colortune?

Also, the volt meter showed that when the motor reved up the voltage would go up too, from 12.2 to 12.5 volts. So my earlier running the motor with the charger hooked up didn't seem to hurt anything.

Getting paid this Friday so battery will be ordered then.

[TopCatGr58]

Hey Bart,

Great that the car battery provided the juice to get is started and running fairly steadily! However, 12.5 V is not where near what it should be reading when the rpms are at 2500 or more...it should be closer to 14-14.5 V. If only 12.5 then something still isn't right!

Take the fuseblock PANEL off, look behind it, there are a few large white plugs that come from the ALT to the harness, they get corroded and can even MELT from overheating when running and trying to charge but can't get thru due to corrosion! There are some other tests...but make sure these plugs are clean/corrosion free and then repeat the measurements.

IF still low then other tests for the field coil and the Reg/Rect will be in order.

Others will need to chime in on the carb/intake vacuum plug responses.
T.C.

[bikerphil]

First, sync all the gauges so they are accurate, I use my mity-vac brake bleeder with it's gauge hooked to each sync gauge and set them all the same. You want to adjust the main idle knob as necessary to keep it around 1100 RPM during the sync process. Sync the carbs next, sync 3 and 4 the same by using sync screw #3, then sync 1 an 2 by adjusting sync screw #1, then adjust the pairs 1+2 and 3+4 by adjusting the center sync screw. Now set at 1100 RPM with the main idle adjustment knob, adjust the mixture screw in or out while watching the gauge. You are trying to obtain the highest vacuum reading on each carb. It wont be a huge change, probably less than 1 mark on the dial. After doing all 4 carbs, re-sink one more time like explained above and you should be pretty darn close. One thing about using a colortune plug, they don't work worth a damn with factory coils, the spark is too weak. It will work well though with high voltage aftermarket coils such as Accels.

[Bartman]

T.C., I will check my terminals, is the voltage regulator the finned box under the gas tank?

BikerPhil, Using the old gages given to me might be hard to use the mighty vac….not enough hands. Each gage hose has two metal turners that you adjust the bleed off with. I don’t see me keeping the vac pumped up to some level and also turning 2 knobs. I will cut off the ends of the hoses for a tighter fit and try one time before saying I can’t do it. The old man that I got the gages from said to attach one hose at a time while the bike was running to a single cylinder. That single cylinder would be the standard that you set all 4 gages to. THEN, you hook the 4 hoses to the 4 plugs.

My old boss always said that it is talking to you if you are listening. That being said, it was popping out the exhaust AND when I pulled a single plug off the vacuum tubes caused the motor to either to bog down or rev up. My question is, if it sucks air at this point and the motor changes then THAT is telling me that my idle screw is running rich or lean. I am trying to use all of my tools at hand to make this right. So, if one of you’s guys will crank up your bike and after warming up pull off a vac plug, what does your bike do?

[Bartman]

Chris and I have been talking today and we are thinking that if it is sucking air and revs up then leaner. So this is on the #1 carb that has the 1/8” drilled needle hole. I will back this one out and see if I can richen up that carb, and turn the other three in to lean them out a little. Those might be dumping more gas than needed and causing the popping????

[bikerphil]

If you have popping noise on decel, yes that means lean mixture. Try turning the idle mixture screw(s) out a little.

[Bartman]

Thanks all of you for your help. I must say that this is a great site.

I cranked up the bike and for over an hour touched and tweeked all of the screws until I finally got the syncs to line up and the popping to go away and it to idle for what I think sounds correct. And, the #1 exhaust is HOT! I am going to try again every night to make sure that it cranks cold and warms up and idles correctly before putting the gas tank on, since you can't touch the screws then.

Before I started I did remove the fuse box and cleaned the terminals behind it. I had greased them before but it doesn't hurt to hit them again with sand paper and electronic cleaner spray.

I did cheat tonight and unplugged the front fairing to reduce the headlight's current pull. With that off the voltage was around 12.75 idleing and up to 13.5 when reving the motor. I later hooked up the fairing and disconnected the truck battery and jumper cable and the voltage was around 12.2 and 12.5. So, is the finned metal box under the gas tank the voltage regulator that I can swap out before going to the stator? OR might wait until I have that new battery and see what the voltages are at that time.

[oldyam80sg]

Do you have an Auto Zone or Advanced Auto parts by you?If so take the battery and have them load test it.You might have a cell going dead.If you don't have the charger hooked up and it dies,then the battery could be the issue.At least then you know.

[TopCatGr58]

Hey Bart,

The Finned black box IS the reg/rect. If you have a nice thin feeler gauge, take it OFF of the gauge and then just turn the key on, and put the gauge strip against the ALT cover, it should adhere to the alt cover as the field coil is activated and creating a magnetic field. However, you have already found charging levels over 13 volts, so we know that the ALT is working.

I keep forgetting, but there's a wire(I think it's the green one) in the smaller reg/rect connector that you can jump directly to GROUND, it's the ground end of the power wires to and from the field coil, it will fully energize the coil to take it to it's maximum charging level, and while the bike is running, if you THEN see the 14.5 volts, then it's possibly indicative of a bad/failing Reg/Rect.

However, have you cleaned the wires that are secured to the reg/rect mounting bolts....along with the casing of the reg/rect and the frame. The earlier models ground thru that mount to the frame, and corrosion there could also be preventing it from grounding properly/effectively. This could cause it to either not be able to fully ground the field coil to get the fullest charging ability, or corrosion in those plugs could prevent it from sensing the proper system voltage and again not send enough of the field coil current to ground.

You probably don't need to mess with the plugs behind the fuse panel if you're already done what you said regardings cleaning and greasing!

T.C.