Getting a Tourer Back on the Road

[spunkhustler]

Been wanting and waiting for a Black Tourer for some time and got an amazing deal from a co-worker with family issues (Dad split, left the bike) and he just wanted to dump it.  Long story.  It hasn't been ridden in 3 to 5 years but was garaged underground and covered so it still looks great.  It has lots of cool farkle including the Two Brothers 6 into 6 pipes with the turns outs (might go back to stock but we'll see).  I figured the carbs would be bad along with the battery but otherwise it seemed OK.  The throttle cables were frozen as were the choke cables so cleaned those up.  Dumped the gas and put fresh stuff in with a new battery and it kind of started but didn't idle and died when I hit the gas.

So the carbs came out and it turned out that they hadn't been re-jetted for the exhaust so I bought the jet kit from Factory Pro.  When I opened the carbs up, there was more carb gunk than I've ever seen.  I cleaned everything in the bowls and put the new jets in, 38 pilots and 100 mains on 1 and 2/ 102 mains on 4 to 6.  2 turns out from all in on the fuel mixture d screws.  Fired it up and it idled OK but lots of sputtering on anything past 2k and under power.  BTW, this was with no airbox in.

Thought I should do the whole carb rack to rule out any problems there so I pulled the carbs again and took them all the way apart and soaked them in carb dip and blew each one out with compressed air.  Got new bowl gaskets and intake o-rings from redeye.  Everything else seemed OK; all o-rings seemed soft enough still, no hard or cracked vacuum tubing and everything still had the stock setup (no desmog)...  Lots more green crap in the screens in the carbs, the needles in the slides were literally glued in place from the dried green goo.  Put everything back together tonight except for the airbox and fired it up.  Ran about the same as the first time.  

Thought maybe the sputtering under load was a fuel delivery problem so I pulled the tank and removed the petcock.  There was about 1/2 inch of green sludge in the tank and the petcock was covered in it.  I had it in reserve position and the hole for reserve was literally full of green goo.  I tried to take the "filter" tube out of the tank but most of it fell apart inside the tank.  I also took the petcock apart to make sure it wasn't full of crap also.  It was getting late but I put it back together quickly with more fresh gas and the petcock without the filter screen setup.  I only ran for a minute or so because it kept stalling but it seemed to sputter still.  I'm also worried I shouldn't have opened up the petcock now but too late.



Any ideas what my next steps should be?

[Michvalk]

It won't run correctly without the airbox in place. You MAY have to clean the carbs again because of the crap in the tank getting sucked into them. After cleaning the tank and petcock, run fuel through the fuel lines, and then fresh fuel with seafoam or some other fuel system cleaner. I personally would pull the carbs and look in the fuel bowls to see if crud got in there. I don't think there should be any shortcuts that you could do to get the results you want. If everything is clean, next step would be to look at plugs for signs of fouling. After that you should be good to go as far as running is concerned. Then do the rear maintainance as this is the only real weak spot on the Valk. Keep everything greased and ride often!

[salty1]

+1 Michvalk    Spunkhustler make sure that tank is clean so your efforts with the carbs isn't a waist of time.      Obviously it's time to replace the petcock.   

[9Ball]

what you describe as sputtering at higher rpm is most likely due to a very lean condition caused by lack of restriction with the airbox out.  Any severe intake leak can cause the popping, sputtering, etc. that you describe.

Better to double check your carbs now than to button everything back up and find out that you re-plugged the slow jets with crud.

[Westsider]

+1 Michvalk    Spunkhustler make sure that tank is clean so your efforts with the carbs isn't a waist of time.     Obviously it's time to replace the petcock.  

Yup...remember with the fuel, and all systems, S#$% runs downhill..

The Plus side is, now you can take the carbs out blindfolded!!

[T.P.]

You can use a whole can of Seafoam in the tank, wont hurt anything.

[salty1]

Just another thought, did you sychronize those carbs? Not going to affect the high end, but is important finish work after fussing with your carbs.

[spunkhustler]

Here is the petcock I took out yesterday

[spunkhustler]

Guess which 3 were on the left side, soaking in the green gooey "gas"

[spunkhustler]

Here's a photo of the needle in the slide.  They were all stuck in place

[spunkhustler]

Here is a shot of the fuel rail with the green goo - it started to dry and turned powdery

[9Ball]

I've seen a lot of these in person, but this picture is the worst so far....

[spunkhustler]

Thanks everyone.  I'm really glad there is a very active Valkyrie community out there to help each other out.  That actually was one of my concerns going into this, I knew I was going to do some wrenching and wanted to make sure I could ping folks for troubleshooting ideas.  

I agree with folks here and if I want to do this right, I'll pull the carbs again and pull the bottoms and slides off and hose them out with a can of carb cleaner.  I don't think I need to break down the carb rack like I did last time but I do want to make sure there is nothing in there.  I've got the carb pulling process down to about an hour so not too bad.

Secondly, I think I need to buy the original tank filter tube and install that.  I can't imagine I'm ever going to get the busted up filter parts out of the tank so I need to have something to stop it from clogging up the petcock intake - especially the reserve with the hole at the lowest point of the tank.  I imagine all the debris will settle there and cause problems.

Next I think I'm going to replace the petcock and am leaning towards the Golon as I like the idea of the tactile clicks for the different modes and it is the same price as the Pingle.  Not sure how I'm supposed to reach under the tank that far while riding to switch it but I guess I'll get used to it.

Lastly, I guess I'll have to put the airbox back in in order to test it correctly but I just can't imagine that the lack of an airbox would cause the level of problems I'm seeing.  Just to be clear, I can't get passed about 3k RPM because of the chugging and sputtering.  It's not just hard to get there, it just can't.  But idle to 2k is great.  I guess I'll see.

[tank_post142]

without the airbox i could not get the bike over 10-12 mph it spit, kicked ,backfired, in general would not cooperate with me at all. this was just screwing around no work being performed. popped that assy back on and everything was fine.

[pocobubba]

I could not get the filter screen on my new Golan to fit into the tank , it was to big around , you might want to check with Golan , I took it off , [using inline filter ]
                                               Pocobubba

[salty1]

Don't forget to synch those carbs. Nag nag nag 

[GOOSE]

the air box off will make a difference.  why did you go bigger with the top jets?....the two brothers pipes do not require jetting of any kind.  probably one of the feww pipes that do not require it.  sink the carbs.

[spunkhustler]

Took everything apart last night and found a tiny bit of gunk in the carbs but nothing too serious.  I tried to fish the broken tank filter out of the tank but there was no way.  I did get a look at it and it is in one piece and not covered in gunk.  Speaking of gunk, there was lots of it in the tank still so I flushed the tank out a few times and I'll be blasting it out with some compressed air soon.    There was so much gunk I can't imagine I'll ever get it all so I ordered a new tank filter and the petcock rebuild kit and will be putting another in line filter between the tank and the carbs.  Hopefully I'll be on the road next week!

Yes, I'll be sync'ing the cabs as well but there are bigger fish to fry right now.

As for the jetting, everything i read and from Factory Pro says that the stock jetting needs tweaking.  I won't know till it's on the road but it is easy enough to drop the bowls and swap jets so I'm not worried about that.