The motorcycle has been good lately. First, I finally found the left-side carburetor I needed on the eBay a few weeks ago. When I bought the bike it had mis-matched carbs and there was no way to balance them (except by ear) and as a newbie my ear had no training to do it. (When you have multiple carbs feeding air and fuel into different cylinders, you want them to be working the same so half your engine isn't working harder than the other half.) I also got it for about $50, and I'd seen the same carbs go as high as $150.
Then I sold some stuff. The factory seat. The original grab bar attached to the factory seat. The squarish-looking valve covers. All stuff I either got originally with the bike or things I had made redundant with upgrades. Let the auctions roll for a week, and made over $400 for all the stuff.
Rode the bike to Modesto last Saturday and spent a good chunk of my winnings at the BMW shop there. Got a device to balance my now-matched carbs. Get a rebuild kit to install all new gaskets and O-rings in my carbs. Found these boots on clearance for half-off because they only had oddly huge sizes left, but as I happen to take an oddly huge size, it was a good thing.
But here was the problem: Inside a carburetor are little parts called jets that let a certain amount of fuel through at different times. They're like little hose nozzles, and they come in different sizes. And to match and balance carbs, they have to have the same size jets.
Which means to make my new carb work, I had to take the jets out of the old one. Which means if anything goes wrong, neither carb will be available and my pretty motorcycle will be garage art until I get it sorted. Last night I started the process and got the jets out of the old carb and into the new and got the new installed on the bike. And it started! There's still lots of adjusting and balancing to do, which I didn't tackle last night, but the fact that it started (and ran on both cylinders) is an encouraging sign. Hopefully today I'll get time to dial it all in.
And the old carb is listed on the eBay, if you know anyone who is looking for a 32mm Bing 64/32/4 carb!
4 comments:
Wow- good deal on selling your stuff and making some dollars. And the boots sound like a bonus.
Good luck with the jets but we also want more Gus pictures!
Well, good to know SOMETHING at your place is running on all its cylinders...
ha!
btw, nice offspring allusion.
Just for those of you keeping score at home, the balancing went well, and I still have a running bike. Woo hoo!
Yea! Now you're balanced AND running on all cylinders.
Great job!
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