New here, and tech question...

[Anonymous]

For as minor as this sounds...

The only reason I say this is because I noticed nobody has touched on the subject yet. Check your hoses. I had HUGE issue with a vacuum hose once that caused one side of my carbs to NOT get fuel, hence not firing on all cylinders.

Hey, its worth a try. I completely understand removing the carbs for the 11th time!

[Sandy]

For diagnostic purposes, if when you get it back together and it still only runs on 1 and 2, and not on 3 and 4, try swapping the 1 and 4 plug wires, and the 2 and 3 plug wires. Since one coil fires 1 and 4 and the other coil fires 2 and 3 you should be able to eliminate a couple of things by doing this. For instance if it now fires properly on 3 and 4 and doesn't fire on 1 and 2, you have eliminated possible carb problems and should probably look to electrical or ignition. If after changing the wires it stills fires on 1 and 2 and not 3 and 4 you have narrowed it down to either fuel (carburation), air (check air intakes) or compression, which you have already checked. This could speed up your trouble shooting time.

[Anonymous]

Very good tip guys, i will do that tonight! Thanks again

G

Ill keep informing all you on the progress

[Anonymous]

OK,
so, its impossible for me to sync the carbs when its running on only 2 cylinders due to the erratic idle of the bike. So...

onto other things, i just went to pop off the cover on the side of the bike for the points inspection that i was about to do. And realized, the three screws that hold that cover on are completely rounded out. The is nothing left for a screwdriver to grab onto. The guy that owned this bike before us musta stripped the *@%^$*@%^$*@%^$*@%^$ outta these things. WHAT NOW?!? How should i go about getting these out?

G

[Sandy]

The easiest way to remove the stripped screws is to just drill the heads off, remove the cover then take out the remainder of the screw with pliers or vise grips if they are really stiff. Once you release the pressure off the threads by drilling the heads off, the remainder usually comes out quite easily. You'll obviously have to buy new screws. Use a 6mm or 1/4" drill bit and be carefull to keep the drill centered in the screw head so as not to damage the hole in the case. When you drill down the depth of the head it should just pop off. If you are off center a bit, when you reach the depth of the screw head stop drilling and use the butt end of the drill bit in the hole you just drilled to twist the head off.

[earlfor]

Those three screws are relatively soft steel. Take a 3/16" punch and with a hammer, flatten the heads a bit , crushing the metal into the center of the screw. Then place a phillips driver bit onto the head and with a hammer drive a new indention into the head. then using an impact driver with a phillips bit in it, 9 times out of 10, you will be able to remove the screws. Be sure to hold the impact driver down tightly when striking it.
You will only get one try......make it a good one :-) A quick, hard whack with the hammer.......no little taps. :-)

Earl

onto other things, i just went to pop off the cover on the side of the bike for the points inspection that i was about to do. And realized, the three screws that hold that cover on are completely rounded out. The is nothing left for a screwdriver to grab onto. The guy that owned this bike before us musta stripped the #### outta these things. WHAT NOW?!? How should i go about getting these out?

G

[ZacharyB]

Wait, hold on, why not just use a replaceable metal cutting saw like those used on sawzalls to turn the cross head into a slotted head? Just use the saw, not the sawzall (overkill), running it across the head of the bolt until you saw a slot into it. That's what I've been doing and I can still reuse the screw afterwards. I was even able to use this technique to extract rounded out left-side case screws inside the clutch cover (tight fit but success after breaking the saw in half for clearance)! Also, get one of those impact drivers off of ebay (the kind you hit with a hammer), they are great, don't own an old metric bike without one.

[Anonymous]

For diagnostic purposes, if when you get it back together and it still only runs on 1 and 2, and not on 3 and 4, try swapping the 1 and 4 plug wires, and the 2 and 3 plug wires. Since one coil fires 1 and 4 and the other coil fires 2 and 3 you should be able to eliminate a couple of things by doing this. For instance if it now fires properly on 3 and 4 and doesn't fire on 1 and 2, you have eliminated possible carb problems and should probably look to electrical or ignition. If after changing the wires it stills fires on 1 and 2 and not 3 and 4 you have narrowed it down to either fuel (carburation), air (check air intakes) or compression, which you have already checked. This could speed up your trouble shooting time.

This is a good point. Also, before you replace your ignition system, check the bowl drains and be sure that you have fuel in all four carbs. The fuel line I believe leads to a tee between the center carbs, and seperating them and checking for a clog at this point may be a good idea.
Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Alright boys, got the screws out, just took some a blow torch, penetrant, a phillips mounted on a ratchet for leverage, a dremel with cut saw, a drill, an X-tract it, and some beer. But those fackers are out!

Cleaning the points are in progress right now. As well, im gonna drain the bowls to make sure theres gas in every on right now.

Tommorow morn, ill do the wire swap...and test the coils if i can borrow a multi-meter. I will update. Thanks everyone!

G

[Anonymous]

Ok, well, all float bowls have the equal amount of gas in them.
I got the timing (points) cover off and gave the points a quick spray of brake cleen to get any crap out of them.

Now she wont even run on her own. It just cranks and cranks. If i give the carbs a shot of carb cleaner down the neck, the bike will flash up for a quick second then die. What the heck is going on????

Im going to try to swap the plugs wires like you said. Now, am i acctually DICONECTING them from the coils and the hooking them up to the other coil or am i just unplugging them from the plugs and plugging them onto the other repective plug???

G

[Anonymous]

So i just swapped the coils over to the opposite cylinders (without disconnecting them from the coils.) And its still doing the same thing, i can only get it to run while spraying shots of carb cleaner down the neck.

Im getting soooo frustrated with this bike, i dont know what to do. My patience is starting to wear very thin, and i may be giving up soon

G

[Anonymous]

Went down to the local dealership. We went over everything ive done, replaced and have tweeked. I talked to 4 mechanics there, and as well two local mechanincs at other bike shops and they all are stumped. Saying it should be running.

It cant be points, because there are two sets, one that controls 1 & 4, and one that does 2 & 3. And its 3 & 4 that aerent running. Same deal with the coils, cant be them either. New plugs are in. Just screwed on new plug wires as well. All good compression. No blockages of breather tubes. Carbs re-built and re-built and re-built.

They said i could take it to them, but theres a good chance they wont figure out what the problem is, and then ill be stuck with a multi-hundred dollar bill for nothing.

[Anonymous]

Carbs are apart for the 12th time. Just re-checking everything. One guy just called me from a shop and said its going to be a cartb problem, because if im spraying in a cleaner manually and its wanting to run, then there ya go. He said a good idea to do, to make sure that it isnt the jets or needles, is to swap every fitting from the right side two carbs over to the left side and vise-versa.

So shes all apart, and im in the process of the swap. I noticed that the "plug" as my manual calls it, that you have to take out to get to the pilot jet was completely plugged on #4 carb. The rest all seemed fine

So, i got that all cleaned up. Now im gonna swap it, and then report back on how it went. Its looking like my thread is starting to bore you all.

G

[Anonymous]

Shes back together, i swapped all the components of the carb. Get it all in, it took a little shot of carb cleaner to get her going. But it runs, kind of.

Now, the right side IS running, and quite nice might i add. And the left side is too, BUT, the left side has a REALLY mean backfire at idle.

NEW PROBLEMS:

-Will only run with choke 90%-100% on

-Wont take any shot from the throttle, just sounds really "wet" and wants to die

-Left tailpipe is backfiring like a mo-fo

Ive played with the ilde air screw and no change. As well, with the choke at full on, it idles at 4500rpm. Ive gotta VERY carefully feather the choke down slightly to bring the RPMs down to about 2000rpm. Any lower it wont run.

Any ideas?

[Detman101]

Man, wish I lived closer to you.

Nothing beats these bikes problems like two heads working to fix the problem. When i first got mine ready to be on the road I had a friend from here come over and give me the "How-to" on getting the bike running. Best of all, I got a really great friend AND my bike is running too!

Carbs still confound me and frustrate me. I can tell you this much. Working on carbs takes a LONG time to set them up correctly. I don't know how long it takes to be a pro at fixing these things but I've been learning on mine since this past winter and I still can't figure out how to evenly set my idle mixture. Everything else is pretty straight-up.

It sounds like your bike has a fuel mixture problem too. Wet....sounds like it is too rich at idle but I can't tell without seeing your sparkplugs.


Good luck dude. Working on carbs can drive you insane but if you can master fixing and diagnosing them you've got a trade that will bring you income for the rest of your life.


Dm of mD