The "Official" Talimena '09 Thread...

[Brent]

Home again

Well I just got Bob's head back on the bike and hopefully will be firing up tomorrow

and... hopefully I will have my windshield before the 8.5 hour trip I have

I am home 13 hrs and a little different route.

[shutchis]

Nice going Brent. We (Steve, Stan, Dell) left at 7:00 AM, and pulled into the driveway at 5:38 PM; 442 miles. It rained about 80 miles riding through Texas; just hard enough to get you good and wet. We stopped at DQ for lunch and got a nice chill.

My XJ ran terrible; I'm conviced the right muffler is blocked. I saw some blueing on the chrome that wasn' there when we left Oklahoma.

Glad you're safe.

[XJOK2PLAY]

Brent, Steve, Stan, Dell...

It was great to meet all of you, and thanks for letting us know you made it back safe.

Glad you made it, Brent. I was concerned. That was a really long ride by yourself.

Take care, and ride safe.

Bob

[Bigfoot]

I'm home and Kat and John should be home at an second. I just can't forget what happened...........

Glad you made it home safe Jeremy. I know what you mean, can't stop thinking about it.

[devilschld]

may i suggest that we change the run name

[classawinn]

Back Home

I made it home Monday night 7:00 PM . Put 1200 mile total on the XS. Sunday, when we left, I started to ride the parkway ,but only got 4 miles and ran into thick fog or clouds, so I turned around and ran the north route to 270, and ran it to Hot Springs AR. I spent the night in Hot Springs and ran some roads there till it started to rain about 3:00 PM so I decided to go home from there because the weather man said it was going to rain Monday night and Tuesday . I ran out of the rain at Little Rock and had a dry ride home. Tuesday it rain hard here all day. The only problem with the bike is the left petcock started leaking and floods the carb went you stop, and fuel runs out the air filter. Going to have to rebuild it .Glad to hear everyone else made it home safe, this is a weekend we will not never forget. My sincere regards to Lee's Family.

Richard Blalock

[trbig]

Glad you made it home Richard, but your problem is a float vlave, not necessarilly the petcocks. If the bike is running, your petcocks should be moving fuel. Your float valves are what controls the volume of flow. If they aren't seating, (Or you have a float sinking) they'll flow too much. Only way to find out if your petcocks are a problem is with it shut off and checked for leaks.


Tod

[classawinn]

leaking petcock

I may have a float problem too but I know I have a petcock problem because when I took off the tank fuel flow nonstop from the left petcock with no way to shut it off. I drained the tank to keep fuel from draining into the engine.The 81 model petcock do not have an off ...only prime--on--reserve

[trbig]

So.. you do have a petcock problem, but your float valves should be stopping it where it can't get into the motor. If the float valves were good, a leaky petcock wouldn't matter.

Tod

[classawinn]

So far the extra gas has been coming out the air filter.I was told it could be bad if it ran the other way into the cylinder. Thats why I drained the tank.It runs fine once you get it running, {Carb flood if park it for more than 30 min} Takes a little extra cranking to get it started but I got 34mpg on the trip which is about what I always get. Will get a petcock rebuild kit and will start from there.

[trbig]

LOL.. If your float valves were working, it wouldn't matter if you have bad petcocks. If you simply fix your petcocks, you're going to have the same problems at idle. But.. it's your bike and I guess this is the wrong place to be talking about this.. lol.


Tod

[XJOK2PLAY]

Hey, Tod...

I witnessed firsthand what Richard's describing.
When Bohn and the rest of us went up to the lodge that afternoon for lunch, Richard had parked the bike and shutoff the petcocks. When we came back out, gas was everywhere. Took a while to restart, but did, and ran ok after that.

He has to have both problems... bad petcock, and leaking floatvalves.

[trbig]

I understand that, and apparently am not getting the point across that fixing the petcocks isn't going to fix the problem. It will fix it for when it's parked, but not while running. But if you fix the float valves first, it won't matter if the petcocks leak or not. Sure, it's something you'll need to address at some point probably to be safe, but only addressing them (The petcocks) isn't going to fix the problem, or be the least expensive.

[XJOK2PLAY]

Yep, totally agree...
He needs to fix both.

[DGXSER]

I agree with Tod as well. The petcock only controls if fuel is flowing into the fuel line feeding the carb and the T system letting fuel flow to two of the carbs inlets in the float bowl. Once fuel gets to the float bowl, then the float valve system controls the fuel flow into the bowl with the float level determining how high in the bowl the fuel gets.

If you have a leaking petcock, and properly working float valves, the only time you would really know it is when you pull the tank.

If your float valve is leaking, then anytime you let fuel flow to the carbs from the petcock, you will get the fuel overflowing into the air box if you have one and or the engine. The fact you continue to have fuel issues with the bike off and it appears to be a standard, indicates bad petcock seals AND bad float valve(s). Petcocks just let fuel out of the tank, the float needle valves let it into the carbs.