Virago 700 in the shop

One of the things I pride myself in is restoring something and keeping it in good condition. I have asked friends who
have bikes if and or when they have changed or at least checked their fork oil and the general answer is never. When I
drained my forks, I actually had a few drops of water come out from one fork! This bike has not been driven for probably
twenty years and sat outside for a few years as well I am told. The water wasn't rusty which was a good indicator to
me. At present, I am on the road to getting it running and am sort of winding up on the major problems. The carburetors
still need some more attention and a carb kit is on order so that is the next project. I have a lot of stuff that is old and
pretty much found in salvage condition and now quite usable. Thanks all for reading along.
 
A “carb kit” is usually just gaskets and seals. The more complete ones might have some wear items like the emulsion tubes.

I do a lot of carbs so it made sense for me to purchase an ultrasonic cleaner. I’ve got a fairly big 20L one so I can throw a full rack in at once if I need to, but you can buy smaller (ie: less expensive) jewelry style ones that work just fine too. You just have to do one carb at a time.

To properly rebuild motorcycle carbs, tou need to clean them. Theres a multitude of tiny passageways in carbs that handle both air and fuel. The problem is the fuel pathways, as fuel left to sit too long turns to gum and varnish. The air passages can be a problem (air is anything but “clean”) but less so than the fuel.

Theres really only teo ways to get he internal passages and jets clean: uktrasonic bath or dip in some pretty harsh chemicals.

Chemicals are a problem because anything thats not steel, aluminum or brass is going to dissolve. That means you have to tear the carbs down to the last screw and bit or you could end up with a plastic of rubber component being destroyed by the bath. Older metric bikes are infamous for some little part of piece being discontinued. Melt away one of those parts and you’re looking for used bits or you have a new lawn art object.

Ultrasonic is the best way. They get any passage over 10-20 microns wide and, if oressed, can clean with plain water. I just throw a little dish soap in and my parts cone out clean as a whistle. Assemble carbs afterwards and they always fire in the first turn and run decently. Then its just a matter of adjustments.

Metric bikes (any engine really) are super sensitive to carb issues. Even the tiniest problem can throw them off. Cleaning is essential for any bike thats sat much longer than 6 months. More so these days with ethanol blends…
 
It is worth it to use non-ethanol gas if you can. Doesn't eliminate gumming up and varnish issues completely, but ethanol is a destroyer. Lost a Linkert to that stuff.
 
It is worth it to use non-ethanol gas if you can. Doesn't eliminate gumming up and varnish issues completely, but ethanol is a destroyer. Lost a Linkert to that stuff.
Nearly impossible to avoid it these days. There are a few places here and there that still carry non-blended, but very few and it's usually their 92-94 blend or higher.

Like it or not, Ethanol is here to stay, at least until we stop burning fossil fuels or gov't's stop mandating it's use.

Better to just accept it, change out the rubber components that ethanol eats to synthetics and deal with the water issues if it sits over time. That's really the only option, other than doing an "E-bike" like conversion.

Me? if I have an engine going into longer term storage (ie: 6 months of more) I drain the carbs, run it to stall and fog the cylinders. If it's FI, I'll drain the rails after pulling the pump fuse and running it to stall. The days of firing up an engine that's been sitting for 5-10 years is over. Modern fuel blends just won't hold up like older blends.

Or, be sure to add a fuel stabilizer and you might get 6-12 months before it turns on you and starts causing issues.

Ethanol, ya just gotta deal with it.....just like when they dropped leaded fuel for unleaded only, or when they mandated DEF for diesels. . No one likes it, but it's just a fact you have to compensate for.

Or better yet; burn it off riding before it has a chance to go bad...;)
 
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Sad but true. I was lucky last year; local marina had 94 (?) non-ethanol, and would let me fill a couple of 5 gallon cans there. Expensive, but all fuel is ridiculously priced now. Fill up the bike before I would leave for the day. She liked that stuff too!
 
Being in the lakes and woods country, one can buy non-ethanol gas anywhere. I always have a supply
at hand, at least 25 gallons or so in cans for chain saws, boat motors, motorcycles and generators. I just bought
8 gallons of it for $3.99 a gallon today. The carburetor kit I bought has floats and gaskets, seals and an assortment
of jets so I expect the outcome will be on the plus side.
 
It's been two days I have been working on the Virago Hitachi 40mm carburetors. I installed the carb kit and
although it wasn't the best kit, I think it will work. It came with some tiny screens that go under the float inlet.
The old screens were complete gunked up explaining why it wouldn't run at all. I don't have a solvent tank
or an ultrasonic cleaning setup so had to improvise using B-12 Chemtool as a solvent, a bunch of Q-tips,
an insulin syringe, and a lot of patience. I injected the solvent into the orifices and little pipes and ran fine
wires through until I could see that the lines were open. Also, the vacuum setup was missing a spring so
had to make up one from some stuff I had laying around. The carbs wouldn't stay in synchronization so
had to tweak on the hardware, stretch a spring, machine a ferrule and readjust several times. So after all
that, I think I am ready to see if my work paid off. P1030806.JPGIn the middle of the photo is the setup that synchronizes the two carbs. Between stretching the bottom spring and adding a ferrule
to the top spring, it seems to be staying in sync. P1030805.JPG This stuff was piling up as I was cleaning.


P1030809.JPG
This area required quite a lavage with the solvent, tiny drill bits and fine wires to make it functional. I'm not sure what it does but I
do know the passage has to be open.

Hopefully, I can install the carbs, fire it up and do a little tweaking so it purrs like it is supposed to.
That's the next step.
 
Not to be a wet blanket, but you can't sync the carbs until they are on the bike and running. You need a manometer, or in more common bike terms, a set of carb stix/morgan carb tool/etc.

You can get them what looks close on the bench, but they'll be nowhere near in sync on a running engine. the blade position is determined by the running condition of the cylinder it's feeding, not in relation to the other carbs throttle blade.

Here's me doing a work up of my Vmax engined venture:

fr_2461.jpg

The manometer is the long white thing with all the tubes on it. It hooks up to the carbs and the vacuum pulls a column of mercury up the calibrated tubes and you adjust the blades until they are all pulling the same vacuum. there's also a 5 gas analyser on that cart, a battery charger, and a laptop. the 5 gas is to get the fuel mixture correct and the laptop is there because I've got a programmable electronic ignition on the bike. But you still need to know what the rpm is in order to properly set the carbs and the bike mounted tach is not sensitive enough. My ignition box displays rpm and voltage on the laptop, but there's also a tach and voltmeter on my cart. You also need to know engine temp, and there's an oil temp probe on the cart as well.

You can get by without that much test equipment, but my minimum would be oil temp, voltage and rpm. With that, you can get close with rpm drops, but not as close as you can with a CO/HC meter.

You'll also need a couple fans to feed the engine cool air or it will overheat before you can get all your adjustments right. Also keep in mind that "plug chops" aren't going to be very revealling as modern fuels burn much cleaner than older fuel blends and the color you will be looking for on a modern plug/fuel is waaaaay down the insulator by the base of the body. It's actually very hard to actually see the plug ring without a lighted magnifier. About all that stil holds true is you can fairly easily see the plug heat range on the electrodes and the base ring on the carb body threads, but they don't really tell you much of anything about the mixture burn. Not with modern fuels it doesn't.

Luckily (for you), you'll have only two to adjust (and one of those will be the master, so you sync one carb to the master carb vac reading) and not the usual metric bank of four. I still remeber doing cbx‘s. 6 carbs, what a nightmare! I used to quietly dissapear when I saw a work order with “cbx 1000” sitting on the front counter. Did a coupke in my time and that was enough for a lifetime! Only thing worse (IMHO) was the 12 cyl carbed Jags. That was beyond a nightmare. Did one, refused to touch another one ever again!

Again, the procedure is in the FSM. Follow it, as there is a specific sequence to adjusting carbs.

You really should invest in some dip or a small ultrasonic. Spray in stuff usually won't touch varnished up carb passages and running wires through the passages just means they are open, not clean to the spec'd diameters. I generally discourage my buddies from doing the "wire thing", as you can often damage the passages, even with something relatively soft like copper. Not only are most internal passages a specific diameter, they also must be smooth or you risk turbulence , which causes another whole new set of problems. You're probably "ok", but certainly not optimal....
 
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Well, it runs now and idles pretty well. That's not to say there isn't work to be done. I need to connect up the rest of the vacuum stuff
and go from there. It's a ways off but happy so far that at least it runs. The fuel tank isn't feeding fuel properly so I need to work on
that next to so at least the carbs have fuel. I like progress when it is in the forward direction. Thanks all.
 
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