Topic: 550's...and sooty plugs...

[Lumbee]

...got a 74 550 I've been bringing back from the dead the last few months.  Did all the regualar maintanance stuff...set vavles, timing, cleaned carbs.  What I have now is serious plug fouling.  I am running pods, but no matter what the jetting the plugs are sooty.  I have 100 jets in it now, and still fouling.  The spark and electrical is strong, so I don't think thats the culpret.  Any ideas???

[Stevien1]

Do you have near battery voltage (within .5v) at the black/white wire to the coils?  I went through something similar on my 550, ran through the carbs half dozen times adjusting everything one step at time.  I found that my bike was loosing almost 1.5v to the coils, so after some wiring work, no more fouled plugs!

You've re-checked the float heights, needle clip positions, and air screw adjustmensts- right? 

[Lumbee]

...good tip, I'll check that out.  Although I used one of those spark test dealies to check spark at the plugs and it looked pretty good...

[number13]

I had the same problem on my 500, running with pods and 4-1 exhaust.
By any logic it should have been lean, but it fouled plugs badly with soot.
Short story is I hadn't cleaned the emulsion tubes when I rebuilt the carbs.
When I did remove the tubes they were completely caked with
gunk. Cleaned 'em up and the problem went away!