Remove California Emissions equipment?

I recently purchased an 86 Honda VF700C Magna. It's a California
model, with all the extra emissions garbage on it. I'm having trouble
with the carburetion on it and someone on one of these boards suggested
it may not be the carburetor at all - it may be faulty CA emissions
stuff (he had the same problem and disconnecting some of it fixed the
problem).

Does anyone know what equipment is safe to remove, and which hoses to
plug up, remove, or whatever? I know it has a charcoal canister, a
purge control valve (PCV), an air vent control valve (AVCV), and a
secondary air injection system including an air injection control valve
(AICV), and an air suction valve (ASV). The abbreviations are from the
Clymer manual for this model.

I don't understand the operation of all these components, so I don't
what is safe to disconnect (all of it) and what would need to be done
with the resulting hoses.

Anyone got a clue? Thanks.

 

Have you, or have you not drilled out the EPA anti-tamper plugs so you
can properly clean out the pilot adjustment screw orifices? Have you
sprayed Berryman's B-12 or an equivalent aerosol carb cleaner through
the pilot air jet and seen streams of carb cleaner come out the idle
jet, the transition ports and the pilot port? If you don't see carb
cleaner coming squirting out of each of those ports or the jet, hold
your fingers over the holes that you do see carb cleaner streaming
freely out of and keep squirting through either the idle jet hole, the
pilot screw hole, or the pilot air jet until you do see carb cleaner
squirting freely out of the port that was blocked. There should be a
pattern of three ports just downstream of the throttle buttefly. Those
are the transition ports that are so critical to off-idle acceleration
just as the butterflies open. If the engine doesn't get enough gas
through those ports it will stall when you open the throttle. The
single pilot mixture port controlled by the pilot mixture screw is
about 3/4th's to 1 inch downstream of the transition ports.

Removing the emissions control equipment before you've properly cleaned
the carbs is just flying off on a tangent.(1)

Removing emissions control equipment you don't understand can get you
into expen$ive trouble down the road.(2)

The PCV valve, for instance, is just an anti-backfire valve in case a
carburetor backfires into the air box. The pressure wave instantly
forces a steel ball against the check valve seat and stops the backfire
from igniting fumes in the crankcase. Otherwise the PCV valve is open
all the time. Your crankcase would need to have an air leak supplying
the PCV hose with extra air to have any problems, and then the PCV
system usually
hooks to the air box anyway (3), so what could be a problem with the
PCV valve? What usually happens with excess crankcase fumes from a
motorcycle engine is they just condense in the air box. Under really
bad circumstance, the fumes will oil the paper air filter, blocking it.

The evaporative control system collects fumes from evaporating gasoline
in the charcoal canister. The canister will admit a small amount of air
through the bottom when you start the engine up. The carburetors are
jetted to compensate for this small air leak. Fumes are then drawn into
the carburetors through anti-backfire check valves. If you overfill
your gas tank, excess gasoline will go down the evaporative control
hoses and flood the charcoal canister. You'll see that the canister
drips gasoline until it all evaporates.

Any device that admits excess air from crankcase pumping to the exhaust
system is isolated from the cylinder by the intake and exhaust valves
when the cylinder in question is firing. How could the excess air
system, which is intended to complete burning of any unburned
hydrocarbons, cause the engine to stall? How much excess air comes out
of the crankcase at idle RPM, anyway. Answer: VERY little.

(1) I have all day to fly off on tangents, as it's over 100 degrees
here and it's too damned hot to ride a motorbike with my head in a
plastic bucket.

(2) Like, when I removed the emissions equipment from my Suzuki GSXR
for the sake of "adding lightness", I didn't know what to do with the
water separator hose. It was right next to the evaporative control
system hose, so I just hooked the two of them together. The next year,
my garage roof leaked, the gas tank got leaked on, and water found its
way into my gas tank and stayed there because I'd disabled the water
separator. Rain water ate pinholes in my gas tank, which I discovered
when I noticed gasoline on my pants leg.

I removed the air box on my GS-1100 in order to "add lightness". I ran
a length of rubber hose from the oil mist separator on the valve cover
down into the bottom of a plastic catch bottle as mandated by racing
rules. When about 1/4 of an inch of oil had accumulated in the bottom
of the bottle, that formed a vacuum seal, and crankcase pressure
couldn't escape. So the pressure forced oil past the starter oil seal
and oil started running out of the starter cavity behind the cylinder
block.

(3)My little Japanese pickup truck has the PCV valve mounted on the
intake manifold. It's supposed to suck a lot of excess air through the
crankcase and burn the fumes. The carburetor jetting compensates for
the extra air. The engineers planned it that way.