Carb Sync

Today, Ron, Paul, Doug and myself got together for a kinda of a half day Tech Day at Paul's House. I rode my Bike with some breakfast, Doug brought fresh coffee and Ron brought beer which never broke into.

Upon arrival I noticed some brake fluid seeping down the left alternator cover. So before we dove into cars, I pulled the tank to discover the cable connection to the master cylinder has vibrated loose and was dripping every time I squeezed the lever. Paul was gracious to offer DOT3 brake fluid, and Doug and I proceed to tighten the suspect cable, and bleed the brakes given the lose of fluid. After a quick road test front brake working great. I ntoiced now the front wheel is dragging a bit, so the caliper will most likely need looking at.

After this we discovered some loose wiring under the tank and the left coil plug wire was loose. We cleaned and put dielectric grease on most of the wire connections, zipped tied the loose cabling up, and generally inspected all items under the tank.

We proceed to look into the carbs.
Paul demonstrated the shorting method, of plugging spark plug adapters into the top of each spark plug them attached to the coil wires. While bike running, you short each cylinder to see which is one is pulling to indicate where the adjustments needed to be made. This was great learning from me, because I had never seen this done correctly.

Paul's order of operation was to loosen the throttle cables and set idle first by adjusting the idle stop screws first to reach correct idle speed, then he proceed to adjust idle mixture screws one by one u until it was set just after each cylinder would die out. He did all this by ear and watching the RPM's. We got idel running pretty smooth.

After doing this by ear we stuck Paul's carb stick on to make final adjustments. The bike was idling very smooth but we detected a new problem. Right off idle the machine coughs and acts as if it is going to stall, almost like the idle mixture is too lean. Paul suggested it might bu need position of carbs needing a good overhaul. Even though we created a new problem with suspect carbs, the sync procedure was a good learning experience, and I will not hestiate to try this by ear first.