I thought the Colortune's process would be fun!

First and foremost: this forum and all of you that make the collective body of community and knowledge are humanity at its best! haha maybe a lil over the top, but I love XJBikes


I have been riding the whole sine wave of elation/depression in the experience of bringing my "new luv" ('85 XJ700) into her best self. Meaning: Hitachi carbs brought to church, valve lash, Engine sync, and now COLORTUNE (thx Bigfitz, Chacal, and everyone that I cant recall your handle at the moment... you know who you are)

As I fiddle with the pilot screw while climbing the Colortune learning curve (which I imagined would be relatively flat...) I didnt notice any appreciable change in color. From turning it all the way in to backing it out as much as I dared. Except with a throttle blip, then i'd get yellow.

Blue flame all the time!? lol

I did this first without the infamous YICK's tool (by accident) and then with my home made YICK tool in place.

Maybe I should just leave well enough- alone... but the tinkering keeps me sane an sober as much as the riding does.

I will continue my attempt at finding wherre this has been addressed in the forum before, and thank you for reading and sharing any info/help with me!

 

If she's always bunsen blue, then I agree that you should just ride her.
There really should be a point where it goes lean (white), and another point where it goes orange (rich) before you run out of pilot screw adjustment, so something isn't right. So long as she rides good, and you don't have any problems with plug fouling, bogging, or backfiring, then whatever is wrong can just be left alone.

 

What color were you seeing? Was the choke fully off? Also it makes the flame easier to see if you do it in the evening )not in direct sunlight).

 

is it all four cylinders doing this?
spring, steel washer then o ring on mixture screw?

 

My experience with colortune is similar to the op's. A very wide range gave me blue, so I went thru the adjust, synch, ride, check plug color, adjust again, etc. routine until I got nice color all plugs.
Bike runs great and gets decent mileage, so as Kmoe says, I just ride it.

 

Thank you gentlemen for weighing in on this. It's the not knowing of what I dont know that leads to frustration.
And with the Colortune process I guess that I didnt know that there can be such a wide range in the pilot screw...? so I was assuming that it would be a very, very fine tuning.
But as per your advice, I have it at 2 3/4 turns out and she runs fine. So that is what I'll be satisfied with (I really wanted to turn the sxrew and she all-a-sudden is a ROCKET! lol)

I would like to mention that I was using my home-made YICKs tool (with the rubber replacements from XJ4Ever com) and wonder if I had it wrong, meaning that the YICKs chamber was allowing air/fuel from the other cyl to mix with the Colortune cyl, thereby giving me a wider range of adjustment on the pilot screw. If I understand the engineering/theory behind the YICKs chamber it is imperative to isolate each cylinder, correct?

p.s. I really am loving the smooth ride and feel of the bike after this process: carbs clean, engine sync, valve shim brought into spec, engine sync, Colortune (of course this didnt play out as I had envisioned lol), engine sync
I do be lovin my Carbtune Pro haha

 

Don't b other with a YICS tool unless you're trying to wring the last 1/10th of a second out for some serious racing.

I, like several others, have a YICS tool but don't use it. As a matter of fact, it's still in the plastic. Don't bother

 

I had very similar experience too, had to go way out to get orange. Went between orange and no fire then backed out about 1/4 turn. Road test and adjust if needed.

 

It has been suggested that you could increase the pilot jet 1 size, then you will/should see the orange.
reason behind the change is Yamaha shipped the xj bikes on the lean jetting side to meet EPA requirements.

color tune is more about moving from white to the bunsen blue to keep you from burning a hole in the piston and getting max fuel economy. going from orange to bblue or white to bblue still gets you there and you still should do the plug checks to see if more adjustments are needed