stevenrankin
Active member
Hey all, just a note regarding a popular topic on the forum; rough or poor idle.
My 84 R80RT recently started running rough and even. stalling at traffic lights and such.
Put it on the bench, pulled the valve covers off and lo and behold, the exhaust valves were tight. Set them back to specification and idle is back to normal.
So, a reminder; before messing with carburetors, do the airhead tune up mantra.
Adjust valves first.
Spark plugs, and points if you have them, inspect, clean and adjust. Make sure timing is right, point gap and condition effects timing so points first. For those of us with electronic ignition, timing for the most part won't change unless something drastic has happened.
Finally adjust the carburetors. Be sure, there is slack in the cables to allow the carbs to be in idle. Carbs mixture doesn't change very much but, cables do stretch, and needles do wear out.
So final point, poor idle is not always the carbs. Cheery bye, St.
My 84 R80RT recently started running rough and even. stalling at traffic lights and such.
Put it on the bench, pulled the valve covers off and lo and behold, the exhaust valves were tight. Set them back to specification and idle is back to normal.
So, a reminder; before messing with carburetors, do the airhead tune up mantra.
Adjust valves first.
Spark plugs, and points if you have them, inspect, clean and adjust. Make sure timing is right, point gap and condition effects timing so points first. For those of us with electronic ignition, timing for the most part won't change unless something drastic has happened.
Finally adjust the carburetors. Be sure, there is slack in the cables to allow the carbs to be in idle. Carbs mixture doesn't change very much but, cables do stretch, and needles do wear out.
So final point, poor idle is not always the carbs. Cheery bye, St.
Even before I finished the first couple of sentences, the words "valve clearances" was going off in my head! Always first thing to check for rough idle but bike seems to be OK at speed.
