Ok... the easiest way to adjust them is to find a spare bowl (head to your local m/c junk yard).. take the brass tube that sticks up inside the bowl (the overflow) and snap it off inside. Remove it.. attach a piece of clear aquarium air line tubing to the bottom brass nipple, re-attach the "new" bowl and turn your fuel on. Bend the aquarium tubing up along side the float bowl and make a mark on the side of the bowl at the top of the fuel level. Rinse and repeat on each carb so you have the same level on each carb, and an 1/8th inch gap between your "mark" and the bottom of the carb (not the top of the bowl).
Believe it or not, float height is fairly critical. Under hard acceleration, enough fuel can be sucked out of the bowls and air begins to get sucked in causing a lean condition, usually ending up in poor top end... If set so they fill with too much fuel, the well overflow and cause problems as well (just examples... lots more can result from bad adjustments). The most important thing is to have them equal... the rest isnt bad to overcome. When your adjusting the float height... bend the tab that rides against the needle NOT THE FLOAT ARMS. If you bend the float arms, you will never be able to measure them on the bench with a float gauge.. Bending it up (lemme think...... yeah) will close the valve early... giving you less fuel... bending it down, will close the valve late and result in more fuel in the bowls.
As soon as the float pad touches the spring loaded valve (and the top of the needle is seated) the valve will begin to close... as more pressure is applied, tighter it gets.. until it reaches the point of shutting off the fuel completely (spring compressed all the way)
Best way to tell if you have a mis-adjustment problem is to drop the float bowl, turn the fuel on and raise the float with your finger. If you can shut the fuel off by hand (moving the float up) 9 times out of 10, the float height isnt the problem.
Keep an eye out for crooked floats. I had a set that someone had bent up before and the edge of the float was rubbing the outer wall of the bowl, causing it to stick every now and then.. and sometimes would result in a dead cylinder (either because of no fuel, or too much) or would result in a mess all over the ground... or just a crappy running cylinder because its lean.
Good Luck!
Mike F
Terry for president!
