The longest Rebuild..Hope Floats!

Well I have been around here for some time, but took a major break from my xj project, over the past year I've built another bike, but it was a new custom.

The reason I came back here is I recently returned to work on the xj, many hours of frustration and a few post on the subject of float levels and all that goes with it, running issues continued with the bike and over and over it was just not consistant. aka levels good then an overflow or just no getting her to act like she should.

Most people would say go back she's not clean..or you have to get the levels set or a vac leak....but to no avail. This isn't my first carb rebuild and I knew my way around bikes, so I finally ran out of time and moved on to newer bikes and that's kept me busy.

So this week I brought her back up on the rack, pulled the carbs and started the process all over again...Now here's the great part, so I felt I should revisit the whole carb again, just checking and double checking things for clean, sure enough she was clean as ever, but I did find a idle o ring that wasn't quite a circle part of it was missing, funny thing is these were all new parts, so I chalked it up to my long drawn out problems put everything back together and she fired right up, did a sync and then was going to color tune, then low and behold a blast from the past...over rev and could not get the idle to really settle it would go to level 1k then hold and then die sometimes for 1 min sometimes for 5...so me scratching my head..kept hearing the words most repeated on the board, check and set float levels!

Dear lord don't make me do this again I'm thinking....I'm almost at the point of buying another set of carbs just to have something else to do or any reason to keep my sanity. We are talking I had done this countless times and felt it was good, but up pops an overflow...and I was thinking I will go at this my own way because if this last tear down isn't right I'm just going to scrap the carbs and get another set.

Here's the thing, someone had brought up some time ago the idea of taking the screws out of the bowl and simple hold em up let it fill then check, most people I think were not keen on the idea and chalked it up to being unworthy of doing. Well here is where the story turns the corner, so I use this new way of checking the levels only to show me yep sight tube is right and now out of being curious I let the arm down on the float with fuel still on and what's this...nothing is coming out right away..oh now a split second later she starts to pour out, but still at a rate I didn't think was right.

So I go on to check the other floats and sure enough all 4 would do the same...sometimes if you let the float down real slow you wouldn't get any flow at all....all this time I was ruling these out because they were new, I bought em and checked em for seal and they seemed fine.
The kicker is the beanie screens on the new floats were just floating in and not affixed to the seats, this in turned created blockage and after putting the old units back in place..(thankfully I save parts)

I then retested each one with the same method and the flow was like it should be...no hesitation..so put everything back together bike fired right up, did a sync then color tune and she purs like a kitten and runs strong through all the gears...brought me back in years as this bike was one of the first I started riding when it was a new model...not the same bike but same model.

I just wanted to share with people the advice of don't get too affixed to the idea that something new is actually working correctly, also don't get affixed to the all common answers, some days you just have to go outside the box a little and look for yourself.

I do want to say thank you for the many of you who continue to share your information with people on this forum, I read a lot more than I write..well normally.

Now onto more fun things like what's this bike going to look like when I'm done.

 

Glad to hear your back and finally got things sorted out!.........But on the other hand you have given us all a new problem to watch for!!!!

 

Good story. Will remind myself when I get stuck in the future.

 

Hi Gator8, It seems that I have the same problem in my bike. Can you be more specific obut setting the floats levels or can you point me where to look for?
Thanks

 

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