Well to quote the late, great Billy Thorpe, (here in the cooler part of Oz) "It's almost summer, and I can almost feel that sweet sunshine, shining down on this heart of mine!"
Anyway, Spring has sprung, and a young mans thoughts turn to his oldest love, his redneck K2 that's been languishing in the garage for far too long. I didn't get outside until midday, but as soon as I did, I knew what I'd be doing today. One of the pieces of "unfinished business" was sorting the carbs. If you guys have been following this holy thread, you may recall I was having carb issues, and had swapped at least 3 sets of carbs on and off this bike, with less than happy results. I rolled the dusty old beast out into the sunshine.
Terry's Redneck Saturday by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
The first set were the cleanest (as opposed to "the first cut is the deepest", with apologies to Cat Stevens) but there was a crack in the body of one, and after patching the crack with liquid steel I was rewarded with fuel pissing out of them, so I tried (for not long) some K0 carbs (what a fcuking nightmare they are!) and some other carbs that I'd soaked in simple green for so long they almost went black! Ooops........
Anyway, none of them worked well, so today I decided to properly repair the first, cracked set, by swapping in a whole new carb body that I had hanging around. It took me a little while to locate the spare set of carbs, I really must clean up my garage one day! Anyway I found them, and the fun began!
This was the damaged carb.
Terry's Redneck Saturday 8 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
The carbs have been off the rack before because the screws weren't that tight, and someone has scratched the numbers 1-4 on the bodies. Maybe for cleaning? Dunno, but they were immaculately clean. Luckily enough, so was the one I swapped in. I'd destroyed a nice clean set of carbs years ago when I broke a float post trying to remove the pin, so being the hoarder that I am, I kept it all for a rainy day, and today was that day. (but no rain)
Terry's Redneck Saturday 3 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
It wasn't hard to swap one body in after undoing all the screws on the backing plate, so all I needed to do was swap in all the other gubbins, and blow all the other carbs through with compressed air to make sure there were no blockages.
Terry's Redneck Saturday 4 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
I adjusted all the float levels and noticed that the little spring loaded pin in one float valve was very slow to return when depressed, and remembered that the corresponding carb would leak fuel the first time around, so I swapped it out for what looked like a better one in my spares box. I finished putting it all together, reinstalled the carbs, turned on the fuel, and it pissed out everywhere! Fcuk! I tapped all the float bowls, but to no avail, so I turned the fuel back off, dropped the float bowl on that carb, swapped out the float valve with yet another one, reassembled the carb, turned the fuel back on, and this time, no leaks. Woohoo!
I fired the bike up, and it seems to be running nicely. I don't want to get too excited in case I jinx it, but by the time I'd gotten this far it was getting late, so I put the tools away and parked it in my driveway in anticipation of a nice ride tomorrow. In the last 2 months I've lost 66 pounds, (my kevlar lined jeans are finally a great fit!) so I'm expecting (or at least hoping for) some added performance from the old girl, hopefully it won't let me down! Cheers, Terry.
Terry's Redneck Saturday 7 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
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