Nicest weather of the whole year this week and I'm working on my bike instead of riding.
First, I adjusted the valves to the max specs of .005" intake and .008" exhaust. Held the wrench in place with a bungee.
I had set the valves last weekend but my wife was pressuring me to get ready to run errands with her, I was hurrying and I reversed the settings. Luckily I double ckecked later because bad things can happen when I rush. At least I got some practice setting the valves and this time I had a better feel for it and the process went much smoother.
I put in a set of 140 main jets. On my 360 carbs the mains instal inside a bolt in the bottom of the float bowls. So I pulled the bolt, found a screw driver bit that would fit, reached it up inside with it, loosened the jets with a twist of the bit with some pliers and unscrewed them the rest of the way with my fingers. The re-instal was just as easy. No carb removal necessary. I hope that's kosher. It seemed to work fine. Sorry, no photo.
I wanted to try and repair the H-pipes before buying new ones or making some. After some thinking on it and seeing what seemed an ideal solution on sale at Princess Auto, I picked up some Brush-On Electrical Tape. Luckily it didn't melt the rubber and after a partial coat it proved to stay pliant.
It really seemed to do a good job coating and sealing, essentially creating a new layer of rubber. I applied 3 thick layers to each pipe and used up 3/4 of the can. (Notice that 3/4 is the same measure in both metric and SAE! )
Here they are back on the bike. Granted they look a bit knarly. Hopefully this stops the air leaks, though.
When I took the H-pipes off to clean and inspect them there was some yellowish, fibre-like dirt stuck in the oil from the crankcase breather. I'm running the original air filters that were on the bike when I got it. I just cleaned them up by blowing out the bit of dust that was in them. They seem stable but I wanted to see if they are deteriorating so I put a test filter over the outlet of the filters. I stretched a piece of nylon stocking over each outlet.
I realize that will probably restrict the air flow but I haven't decided which way to go for new filters so I wanted to check this way before I decide and order different filters.
After all that was done it was time to sync the carbs. Rather than figure out a different gas source I just turned the tank around and supported it next to the bike. My crash bar came in handy for supporting the manometer and the ATF matched my colour scheme perfectly.
The carbs were not far off initially and the syncing went totally smoothly.
What took the longest was
shooting video of the process.
Yesterday I took a 30 mile ride and the plugs looked like so:
Left Right
I didn't notice any difference in the bikes performance after doing all the above. It pulls good at low rpm, between 3000 and 4000 it is smooth and pulls well too. It has the same power up at highway speeds and pulls the same at 3/4 to full throttle all the way up to redline. No stumbling, stuttering or lack of juice anywhere in the range. It ran that way before, too. The plugs look a bit darker now though.
The bike was revving up to 3000 rpm again after it was fully warmed up but a partial turn of the idle adjust screw took care of that.