hard kicker

I have a '79 Sportster 1000 with a kick start and a S&S Super B carb.
Problem is it's a real pain to kick over when it's been sitting for more
than a hour or so. Sometimes 20+ kicks! After it's been running it
start on two or three kicks. I cleaned the carb, changed the plugs,
checked the point gap and the timing. Still a pain to get going. Any
suggestions?

 

How's your battery?

 

The battery seems fine meter reads 11.5 volts.

 

Too low.
12.7(minimum)should be 13 or better.

 

I'll charge it and see what happens, thanks.

 

"Michael Killenbeck" <>
wrote in message

SNIP

Let it set for a couple hours before you test it.
Testing right after it comes off the charger MIGHT
give a false reading. Also if the battery checks
out Ok then you need to check your charging
system...I have a DUMB question, just how old is
that battery? I've 4+ years on the one in my wing
and it's still strong BUT just like a cage after 4
years I expect it to fail any time now.

--
Keith Schiffner
RCOS #7
Assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary of the
Ministry of Silly Walks.
"terrorist organization" is a redundancy

 

Next time you get that bad puppy fired up and warmed up so it will
idle, squirt some WD-40 at the throttle shaft seals. S&S carburetors
are known for
leaky throttle shaft seals, and, if the engine is sucking *air* through
leaky seals, it will idle faster when you spray WD-40 at the seals, and
you will know you have to replace the seals, or buy a modern Japanese
carburetor...

Harleys have enough problems with low vacuum in the intake tract as it
is, without having *air leaks* right at the throttle butterfly of a
copy of some obsolete carburetor...

Japanese Mikuni or Keihin carburetors are so much improved over those
primitive old-fashioned carburetors, only a die-hard would put up with
them----or somebody who understands what Harleys are all about and know
what is happening...

**************************************************************************
I don't hate Harley Davidsons or Harley riders and I'm not trying to
put anybody down. This is just what is happening when a Harley is hard
to start...

Harley Davidson has used that trademark narrow angle V-twin design for
about 100 years, but many riders just don't seem to understand what it
is that's "better" about a V-twin...

Better than what? A V-twin is better than a single cylinder engine
because it has twice the number of cylinders and it runs a bit smoother
than a single. If you can get one cylinder to fire, the other will get
dragged along faster and it will start firing, too

Big single cylinder engines are hard to start because vacuum in the
intake tract downstream of the slide is low, and vacuum doesn't build
up fast when you're kicking an engine over. The fuel flowing through
the idle jet that's supposed to start the engine hardly gets started
through the intake tract when the vacuum stops and whatever fuel might
get started flowing quickly settles out on the "floor" of the intake
passages...

So on the first few kicks, the engine is getting a weak mixture, and
maybe a few kicks later, it's getting a mixture that's too damned rich,
because repeated starting attempts pick up that gasoline that has
pooled on the floor of intake tract...

Owners of big single cylinder engines learned to turn the idle SPEED
screw all the way down for cold starts. That would increase vaccum
downstream of the throttle slide, so a richer mixture would be drawn
into the engine sooner. They would start the engine, warm it up while
nursing the throttle to keep the engine running, and then readjust the
idle speed when the engine was warm enough to idle. They learned to do
this *every time* they started the engine after a few days of not
riding...

They also learned the proper way to use the choke. Full choke, NO
throttle, ignition retarded, kick the engine several times until it
started popping a little. Then they would open the choke part way, give
the engine a little throttle and kick and it would usually start up...

Instead of a real choke plate, a lot of old British bikes had a
"tickler" in the float bowl. The tickler rod pushed the float down,
holding the float valve open. This would flood the carburetor so the
engine wouldn't need to make so much vacuum to draw fuel up into the
throat...

Having a mechanical ignition advance and retard lever was a good thing,
too.
If the rider tried to kick start the engine with the ignition advanced,
it might backfire and push his leg up in the air and hurt him...

Harley Davidson's have used primitive carburetors for years. Some of
the rider stick to old, obsolete designs because of tradition, because
they think it makes the bike look "cool" to have an old-fashioned side
draft carb
like the old Tillotson's we suffered with in the 1950's. My 1949
Whizzer motorbike had a Tillotson and it was very hard to start.


Besides the problem of low vacuum in the intake tract, there is the
problem of firing order. The Harley engine fires a-ONE! and a-TWO! and
a BLUB BLUB, and repeats, with a lot of degrees of crankshaft
revolution between intake strokes. Vacuum in the intake tract drops
off, gasoline settles to the bottom of the intake passages, waiting
there to be sucked up by the next intake strokes and flood the
cylinders....

And, since the single primitive carburetor is feeding BOTH cylinders,
one cylinder will always try to ROB the other cylinder of the weak
mixture it has just inhaled. It will try to suck that fuel back out of
the intake tract. I remember watching my outlaw biker neighbor try to
kick start his chopper. He was a member of the Galloping Gooses MC. He
came out in his sneakers and took the right sneaker off and put on a
pole climber's boot and laced it up and started kicking that big twin
until he was sweating and out of breath. I was amused, so he said to
me, "You wanna come over here and show me how it's done?" So I jumped
over the fence and went over and tried to kick the engine over. I
couldn't even budge the kick starter against compression, with a lean
mixture in the cylinders and the ignition
couldn't be retarded. If that engine had backfired on me, it would have
kicked me to the Moon...

 

Thanks for all the info.

 

You're welcome, Rusty...

A long time ago, in a universe far, far away, I was a dirt bike racer.
I had a little Yamaha 250cc 2-stroke single, and I didn't know how good
I had it, until a guy at work learned that I raced dirtbikes in the
desert and he wanted to come along too...

He had a Greeves MX-5 250cc 2-stroke single and I had lusted for the
Greeves when I first saw one, I thought it was as ugly as an English
Bulldog and that ugliness gave it character. But I couldn't afford one
at the time and the Yamaha Single Enduro caught my eye. Yamaha was
offering a
Genuine Yamaha Tuning Kit that included a ported cylinder, high
compression head, expansion chamber and a larger VM-30 Mikuni
carburetor to replace the small VM-26 carb the bike came with...

My friend's Greeves was equipped with an Amal concentric float
carburetor. The claim to fame of the concentric float carburetor was
that lean angles didn't affect it like the old Amal Monobloc carbs that
would cut off the gasoline supply at high lean angles...

That wasn't such a bad deal if a 2-stroke engine loaded up and fouled
the spark plug. The rider could lean the bike all the way over to one
side and the float would shut off the flow of gasoline to the carb...

I watched world champion motocross racers doing that on their CZ's when
they would foul out a plug...

My friend couldn't do that lean it over bit with his Amal Concentric
carb though. He was stuck with a motorbike that had a
Frankenstein-designed kick starter lever that would break his foot if
he kicked the engine all the way through with his foot properly
positioned on the pedal. If he put his foot at an angle on the pedal
and kicked the engine over, his foot might slip off the pedal and it
would hit him hard in the calf...

And the damned Amal Concentric was still primitive, all it had was an
idle screw, a main jet and a needle jet. He would keep fouling spark
plugs trying to start the engine, and when he would finally get the
engine started, he would want to ride the bike immediately...

I kept telling him to rev the engine up and blow out the excess rich
mixture, but he wouldn't do that, because the damned transmission would
only shift gears at *idle*. He expected that moronic English Bulldog of
a Greeves to actually idle like some Honda 4-stroke...

He was one of the most stubborn people I've ever met, he really had to
suffer to learn...

But the Mikuni carburetor on my Yamaha was much improved over the Amal
carbs the Japanese had studied and originally copied. The Japanese
engineers cleverly cross-drilled the needle jet with emulsion air
holes, and they did the same thing to the idle jet, it had emulsion
holes too...

Those tiny little holes allowed air to mix with and "emulsify" with the
gasoline, so the fuel was broken up into tiny mist particles that the
engine could burn ever so much easier than the big rain drops of
gasoline the Amals were feeding to the Greeves engine...

I loaned my spare VM-26 Mikuni to him and a selection of extra jets. I
told him that a VM-30 would probably be just fine for his Greeves, but
he asked around and others told him that he could use a VM-34 with no
problems, so that's what he finally bought. He was very happy with the
much-improved Japanese carburetors, and one day he really surprised me,
he finally admitted to himself that his frame was bent, just like I'd
been telling him for about 2 years. He got the frame straightened so
his good-running Greeves didn't run down the road like a puppy dog...

Several years later, I happened to see a big Suzuki 750cc street bike
that was for sale, and I also noticed the owner had a Greeves MX-5 for
sale, too. I was curious about the Greeves and asked the guy about it.
He told me what he wanted for it, and I told him that I was really
interested in the Suzuki. He said he would *give* me the Greeves, if I
bought the Suzuki.

I turned him down on the free Greeves. It might have made a good post
for a mailbox, if the kids didn't steal it...

 

Are you sure that will still work? WD40 replaced the butane as propellant a
while back. The new propellant is non flammable.

Ed Cregger

 

If you're talking about the richening of the mixture, and subsequent
increase in idle speed, this should still work. AIUI, the effect results
from blocking the air leak and could be accomplished by spraying _any_
liquid onto the relevant parts. WD 40 is cheap, convenient, and won't
cause any strangeness inside the engine if it leaks in. Mind, the
volumes of water that we're talking about likely wouldn't either...

--
Later,
John



'indiana' is a 'nolnn' and 'hoosier' is a 'solkk'. Indiana doesn't solkk.