Quote:
Originally Posted by dcj13
I am a bit of a scaredy cat around carbs and I only had one 300-level class in fluid dynamics a long time ago (but I did pretty well in it!).
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No reason to sweat working on carbs. Other than taking them off the Ninja, which is a pain (but gets easier after a few times) they are pretty simple.
My son and I recently worked on a leaf blower that never ran right, even when new. It wouldn't idle and when you gave it full throttle it would bog. It only ran OK at mid-throttle and was hard to start.
We took the carb apart and checked it over - looked fine. We took the carb on-and-off and disassembled it about 5 or 6 times before it would start again but we never found an obvious problem. The low and high speed mixture adjustment screws were blocked and had no notches (slots) in them at all. We cut a small cross-slot in each one and made some adjustments, eventually getting it to idle smoothly and take full-throttle without bogging.
My point is - don't judge what is "right" by what is "stock". Take some time, do some tuning and testing, and it will all eventually make sense. Know the fuel you are tuning it with. If there's any question, dump the fuel and add new before continuing. You will never get it to run right if the fuel is bad.
If you don't like working on carbs, keep track of your fuel. Drain the floatbowls if it's going to sit. Run Techron Concentrate fuel system cleaner once a year. Use stabilizer. Keep the tank full. Run ethanol-free gas.
I never take carbs apart on my equipment (except for tuning) - it's always someone else's.