carb gasket holes

[edgo]

I punch out all of the pre-cut holes on the gasket in my K&L carb rebuild kit. Now that the carbs are installed the bike is doing the runaway idle thing like it has an air leak. On the edge of the carb body there is an open hole facing down, on the left rear of the edge where the gasket is. Is this hole supposed to be open or should the gasket cover it? I'm thinking this is my air leak and the source of my fast idle.

Thanks,
Ed

[Ken Talbot]

The hole in the red box does not go anywhere, either into the carb body or to a corresponding hole in the float bowl. It should make no difference whether or not the gasket had a hole there.


OTOH, the hole in the blue box does go somewhere, both in the carb body and in the float bowl. I believe it is an atmospheric vent for the hole that receives the brass tube of the enricher circuit.

I'm guessing the source of your fast idle might be a simple as needing to adjust the idle speed screw between carbs #2 and #3. If you did a bread tie sync, this is a sure thing as this sync method leaves the butterflies set way too wide open.

[Winterhawk]

I've punched out all the holes in K@L's gaskets all the time and haven't had anything weird happen. Maybe your clamp is touching the linkage or not enough slack? Carb sync?

Let us know what when you find out.

[edgo]

The linkage is free and and snaps back when the bike isn't running. I'll turn back the big knob and see what happens. The bike idles fine when you first start it up. Then when you blip the throttle the engines revs up to 5K and won't go down.

Ed

[RiskyBusiness]

I had the same symptom and it was caused by the carbs being slightly out of sync. I don't understand conceptually why sync would cause this, but resyncing fixed my idle stick.

[Pat Kelly]

The easiest way to find where air passages go (or if they're blocked) is to blow smoke through them. A straw helps.
I learned this from rebuilding on automatic transmissions. Valve bodies are a nightmare maze of passages.

[Bud Manley]

Originally posted by edgo
The linkage is free and and snaps back when the bike isn't running. I'll turn back the big knob and see what happens. The bike idles fine when you first start it up. Then when you blip the throttle the engines revs up to 5K and won't go down.

Ed

I did the bread tie synch and had a similer problem. didn't read that I needed to almost close the big knob for proper idle.
Also while trying to pull the carbs I bent the throttle cable holder deally. when I hit the throttle the Cable holder got stuck on the rubber carb boot and wouldn't release.

[edgo]

I backed the big knob down so it idles at 1K. It runs real strong off the bottom, not real clean but good in the middle and it screams on top. I think with some new plug wires it will be in good shape.

Thanks for the help.

Ed