Not again! By FACE PLANT FOR LIFE (Read 337 times)

[FACE PLANT FOR LIFE]

After I cleaned my carb yesterday and everything was working great, I failed to realize that my carb gasket was not correctly in place AGAIN. So while I was asleep, I guess the gas just leaked out of the carb. And seeing how I have a bad petcock, the gas just kept flowing. I woke up this morning with close to a full gallon of gas gone from my tank and a VERY gassy garage. Jeez! I redid the carb and hopefully the leak is gone..but either way, I got my valve adjustments done shortly after that, and let me tell you I must have screwed up the first time I did it, because they were noisy and I could fit a .007 in both exhaust and intake...! They're back to being quiet now though. So no more noise and no more carb leak. Phew. I smell like gasoline and brake cleaner. To the shower!

[cyborg]

You have to be sure you're on the compression stroke top dead center ,,, that way you're on the "lowest " part of the cam ,,, thank God,,, you had no sources of ignition in the garage or your post headline would have been,,,,BLAST then the ensueing fire

[FACE PLANT FOR LIFE]

I think where I screwed up last time was that I was too lazy to do TDC by directly rotating the flywheel. Last time I adjusted, I just used the kickstarter until it was TDC, which was probably a bad idea. Note to self, always rotate the engine yourself!!

[novaraptor]

It's how we learn...

[cyborg]

i'll bet you were 180* out,,,very common,,,glad you sorted it out

[Bashan]

When one valve is completely open the other is completely closed. I rotate the engine until one cam lobe has a valve completely open, and then set the other valve. It is completely slack and ready for gapping. Finding TDC works but it can be a PITA and it is not needed for a simple valve set. You can also just look at the cam lobes and when the lobe is completely off of the rocker arm and towards the head, set THAT valve. You need not look at the flywheel or look for the piston for a simple valve set, all that matters is that the lobe of the cam is away from the rocker on the valve you're setting....end of story.

The vacuum fuel valve is a safety device design to prevent the type of gas spill you experienced. Rich

[FACE PLANT FOR LIFE]

You know, come to actually ride it today after the carb cleaning and the valve adjustment and the perfect air fuel ratio..I don't think it's ever run this good in its life. I mean it idles so smoothly. Purrs like a kitten. It's a tad bit faster than before. And sometimes it gives a bit of a sputter when taking off (too lean still?) but it gets right up to speed. Ah, the joys of maintenance.

[cyborg]

Very nice Face,,, now let's try not to burn the joint to the ground

[Bashan]

Pull the plug, bare is lean, black is rich. Start at 2 1/2 turns out on A/F. Back the A/F screw 1/4 turn CCW at a time until the RPM's stop going up, or don't change. Back in 1/8 set idle till wheel doesn't move. If RPM's go down on first CCW turn, wrong way and do same procedure going CW. If not much change either way and results ambiguous set to 2 1/2 out. That last is my advice, I just did this today. Thanks to Alley for the definitive A/F setting procedure, it worked great. Rich