Carbs were cleaned and synced ~7 months ago or so, timing is right, plugs are all firing. The engine starts up like a champ and drives just fine, but after the engine gets hot it starts to stutter when the throttle position is really low. This is true at high speed and at low speed, but after the engine is hot and the bike is still and in first gear, revving the throttle at all chokes the engine and it dies.
I'm pretty sure its rich in this condition, 3 reasons:
1. When I screw the air screws really far out (like 7 full turns) it seems to not be as bad, although its still there. At 7/8ths it dies reliably.
2. The exhaust smells rich, and looks rich.
3. The plugs are a bit sooty (not horrible, but sooty none the less).
To combat the richness, I set the floats a bit low. This didnt seem to have a significant effect. The jets are all original brass...but i wonder if I made a mistake cleaning the idle jets a few months ago because I used a needle (probably steel) and I'm suspecting it may have made the hole oversized.
HondaMan suggested it could be related to the orings on the primary jet being too small. The only thing I used from the carb rebuild kits were the orings and the ones on the primary were indeed pretty thin, but I don't have, nor have I heard anyone suggest anywhere I can get properly sized orings.
OK, let me throw one other thing into this mix. the bike has a 50k+ miles on it, and the cam chain tensioner is shot, it was shot when i bought it but not too noisy, and now its its rattling like crazy. I'm thinking I will have to tear the whole engine down to fix that too. So, I'm soliciting opinions, should I just bite the bullet and do all this at the same time, or try to get it running better before I start the rebuild — one less variable?
