Check Everything

[Urban_Legend]

As some of you who are on Fakebook would know I have been having some running issues with my 84 FJ1100, which are mostly fixed now, but I thought I would share the experience.

The bike had been getting progressively harder to cold start and just running very happily at town cruising speeds. Then a few weeks ago it started running very rough and sounded like it was rrunning on 3 cylinders.
Convinced it was a carb issue, I pulled them out, gave them a clean, reinstalled, turned the key and could not get it to fire. The bike needed some other maintenance, so I pulled the carbs again, ordered some parts, including jets from RPM.
I threw the what is happening question out on FB and got some good responses, which I follows up on. Stuff like Float heights. Of they were really out. So fixed that. Compression? pulled the plugs and found my tester, which I had forgotten I owned. Compression was good and within 10lb pressure between all cylinders.

New bits arrived and installed the carbs again. Pushed the button to start.....no fire....bugger. What now?
Pulled the carbs again, and went one step further this time. I pulled the heat shield off as well to have a good look at the inlet boots. They are showing signs of age, but not too bad (will replace in the near future. Then X Ray (Ray Wise) suggested the intaake boot O rings could be had it..... moments pause, I have some new ones of those. It was worth a shot. Nothing else was working.

So I pulled the boots off and there, plain to see, 3 of the boot had been leaking. Number 3 excessively so. Installed the new items. Re installed the carbs again. returned mixture screws to 2 1/2 turns out. and press the go button.

IT'S ALIVE. The bike was running. I did some balance tuning and adjusted the mixture screws, and she sounded sweet. A test ride last weekend confirmed that I had got it right.

The moral of this story. Don't get fixarted on one possible cause. Keep investigating. And don't give up.

Mark