Broken Pilot adjustment screw pintle. What the heck????

So I finally decided to take apart my 83 XJ750 and clean the carbs and do the whole routine maint. thing. I bought this bike not to long ago and I always thought it ran pretty good. Because of this site I was made aware that it could run a whole lot better. Besides # 1 plug was showing a lean condition and I now know a super clean plug is bad.

So to make this story short I took off the carbs to clean and I thought I was lucky because the caps were still in my carbs. The carbs were really pretty clean inside so I deal with all the small issues and reassembled them. I didn't remove the pilot screws because I didn't want to mess with them until I was able to see how the bike ran after cleaning them. Needless to say I installed the carbs and took it for a ride. Seem to be the same. Slight hesitation but ran ok. So I decided to mess with the pilot screws. I could tell the change with 3 of the 4 cylinders. But #1 still was lean no matter how far out I brought that screw. Sooo. . . . Carbs came back off and I found out why my lean # 1 was.

The pintle for the pilot screw was broken off and stuck in the hole in the carb. Since that hole is accessible from the engine side of the carbs I used compressed air to blow out the piece. Luckily I have another bike that is in the tuning stage and I was able to borrow a pilot screw to keep my bike on the road.

Anyone ever heard of this happening? I never expected to find one of these broken. Also, where is the best place to get a replacement set?

 

chacal has them listed at this link

http://www.xjbikes.com/Forums/viewtopic/p=103282.html

 

Okay, now I'm really curious...what magickal time warp machine does Chacal have to keep supplying parts for these bikes? I'm all [Wayne's World] "we're not worthy" [/Wayne's World] but seriously, if he can get stuff like this, can he bring back a case or two of Crystal Pepsi? :lol: