Running rich, and I mean rich! (Whole tank in 130KM Rich)

When I first got the bike it was running a bit rich, nothing too bad as it was better for it to run rich than lean. It also had descent fuel consumption per KM.

Over the two months that I owned it the richness became worse, first it was bad fuel consumption (About 10L per 110KM) and now it's gotten to a stage where the bike wasted the whole tank in 130KM and there is this horrible petrol smell at every intersection I stop at, it literally smells worse than a petrol station!

To top it off, the exhaust note isn't smooth anymore and there is some kind of popping noise occurring when you rev it, think of them as gaps in the normal exhaust sound. The bike is bogged down at low revs too, anything under 10K.

The exhaust note problem started to occur when the bike wasted a shitload of petrol one night and picked up all the filthy bits from the bottom (The tank was nearly empty). The richness problem is so bad that it will occasionally flood during normal riding and die in the ass.

It's not the EXUP, that's all operating smoothly. I'm thinking it's the fuel mixture settings and dirty carbies. There are no dead spots in the rev range at all!

Today I took the carbies out, going to give them a good clean tomorrow morning. What do you guys recommend I do? Do you think they need to be balanced as well, there are no dead spots in the rev range so I don't think that is neccesarry and I don't have the tools anyway.

Another thing, on the carbies there are two pipe sort of things (Look kinda like spark plug leads) that swing around but don't apear to be connected to anything. What the hell are these things? These are located towards the air filter side.

Sorry for the long post but all help is REALLY appreciated!

 

The previous owner had the "Carbs overhauled, tuned and balanced carbs" - according to the invoice as well as new chain, sprockets and plugs done about 5000KM ago.

No mention of valve clearances, are these hard to check, I got the whole bike apart anyway.

I changed the oil and plugs at 50.5K, Itching to see what the plugs look like now the bike is at 51K.

I'll go check now!

Oh and, any tutorials or ideas of what I should pay extra attention to cleaning when I'm working on them? Thanks.

 

No fuel pump, looks like it was removed which explains why I can never waste ALL the petrol at the bottom of the tank.

There was one leak coming directly from fuel supply hose on the carbies, however this was so small that it did not drip at all.

 

Well I'll be damned! I finished cleaning em' today and put em back on.

I can honestly say that it goes like a new bike, the exhaust note has changed to a deeper one for some reason but boy does it pull, it pulls like it pulled when I first got it.

On first start it kept dieing at idle and blew a shitload of white smoke and black smoke at high revs, after that I could smell carby cleaner at every traffic light but there was no more white or black smoke that I could notice.

The ******* popping noise is still there however the bike pulls like crazy compared to how it used to pull. I have no idea how accurate I set my mixture but I put it just a bit off from 3 turns (was running rich before).

I haven't even balanced the carbs yet and I think there might be a bit of a dead spot between 6 - 8k RPM but ******* oath she goes like she never has!

Anyway, when I got home (10KM later) I could still smell carby cleaner. I need to ride it a bit more, see exactly what's going on and the fuel consumption. I even have a feeling that it's running a bit lean (Hence a lot of white smoke?)

After giving it a fistfull, quickly slowing down at the lights and pulling in the clutch the idle goes down and sounds like it's going to die only to go back to normal idle, any ideas?

 

The flat spot is now gone <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!-- s -->. The thing is that it takes longer to warm up now, even think that it might be running a bit lean (I put each screw just a bit of 3 turns) and the bike seems to be wasting **** all petrol now (520KM) and **** all is gone from the tank but I gotta finish the whole tank and see the final result.

The bloody thing goes much nicer now, black smoke is completely gone but there seems to be a bit of white smoke (Not much) at higher revs.