Not what we thought

[Nastydude]

you folks remember my previous posts my bike was sputtering kicking backfiring flooding I checked and changed all electrical and carburation none of this worked I just looked at it again today but this time i just put the carbs on without hooking up the stock breather. It ran great took it for a ride and it was awesome! ran great no symptoms. carbs 1+2 have been problematic since day 1 and I noticed that when the vent hose was connected to the breather raw gas would actually squirt out of the pilot jet in the intake of the carbs. take off the hose gas quits squirting. So here is the deal at preasent. the only way this bike would run well is with the carb vent pipes disconnected from the breather and the bottom of the breather and the filter removed. tonight I checked out the breather and found that the vent for carbs 1+2 was plugged. I also checked the snorkle for obstructions as the bike will still sputter, surge and greatly lack power with bottom of the breather attached with or without filter in place. I will check tomorrow to see if unpluging the vent fixed the squirting gas problem. the breather though has me confused how can the stock breather be producing enough air restriction to run like crap.
does anyone have any ideas?

[Nastydude]

part ways there

unplugging that vent fixed the gas squirting problem but i'm still scratching my head as to why the stock breather box will not deliver enough air to run the engine properly.

[scalded dog]

One fo my 79 standards and a 79 special of a friend, was doing the same thing, I took the carburators apart again, cleaned them again. and the problem was fixed, it was the carbs all along. I had just cleaned the carbs on both, but once I did it again, it fixed the problem. Your problem sounds like the same thing, when I had the bottom off of both these bikes air box, the bike would run great, put them back on and they would spit and sputter. Later 'Dog

[skids]

Re: part ways there

Rick Jemmison discovered this on the older model carbs that have the breather hoses. This is why you can't just plug them off when you run individual cone filters. It is all part of the float controls for the fuel levels. You didn't previously set the floats to compensate for the plugged-hose condition did you?

Originally posted by Nastydude
unplugging that vent fixed the gas squirting problem but i'm still scratching my head as to why the stock breather box will not deliver enough air to run the engine properly.

[Nastydude]

you folks may not believe this but here it is any way

I bought this 1978 XS1100 E 3 months ago. it had been parked semi shedded (1/2 of the bike was under the 20 foot roof of an open ended quancet) for 15 years with no storage steps taken. The bike had many problems as you can imagine. All of these problems were actually overcome relativly easy except the engine I got it running in a very short amount of time and labour considering the storage conditions. Kinda cool what happens to gas after 15 years! Who would have guessed it tries to turn back into a dinosaur.

the problems were flooding backfireing, poping in the exaust surging the only time the bike ran good was hard acceleration above 4500 rpm.

Things I did to remedy the problem.

over 40 hours into the fuel system:

- Flushed tank
- checked and cleaned fuel cocks
- compleatly dissasembeled, cleaned and reasembled carbs (so many times I cant remember them all)
- Changed needles seats and floats on all the carbs.
- Changed the carbs with a known good set (ran at the race track three days before).

Well over 20 hours into electrical system.

All the parts changed were from the same bike as the carbs. This bike ran the quarter mile before and after I changed the parts.

- Changed TCI box
- Checked and Changed coils
- Checked and Changed entire vacuume advance and pickup assembly including wiring right to the plug behind the fuse box.
- Checked and Changed Spark plugs.
- Cut all conections in fuse box and installed grommets to ensure proper connection
- Disassembeled, cleaned, reassembled and checked every electrical connection switch and button (and I mean every single electrical connection). including the tach and speedo ( there were other problems here also that i remedied).

The solution to all my bikes problems is so lame I still cant believe it.

THE VENT TUBE FOR CARBS 1+2 INSIDE THE STOCK BREATHER BOX WAS PLUGGED. <I can just picture this little midget spider pissing himself laughing at me>

Thats it! Works great! Goes like snot! I feel like break dancing and I hate break dancing!


I am not a mechanic but I guess a few might consider me mechanically inclined. Basically I have been blessed with the ability to remain broke enough to disqualify me from purchasing new toys, so I get to buy and fix other peoples extreamly broke ones. Anyway; about 90% of the specific knowledge which allowed me to do most of the following tasks came from this website although the solution to the problem was not found inthis web page all you folks still must pat yourselves on the back cause you have imparted me and others visiting this website with a ton of knowledge. THANX EVERYONE!!!!!!