QuestionQUESTION: When I bought my '82 GL1100I it ran OK. Only paid $600 for it. I took a couple of wrong turns working on it and ended up rebuilding most of it. I just rebuilt the carbs and put them back on. I had to open the throttle up all the way to get it to start. It wasn't running good at all. I looked down about 30 seconds later and noticed it was leaking more fuel than it was using. I took them back off, didn't do much to them and put them back. Fuel leak was gone but it wouldn't start and back fired alot before it shot a flame out of one tailpipe and started a little fire in the combustion chamber. The float levels are correct. Could my problem be the pilot screw adjustment?
ANSWER: The fuel leak was probably caused by a float valve not closing properly. When you opened the carb you probably allowed the debris to fall out so that the needle could close against the seat properly again.
A couple of clarifications seem appropriate:
- The combustion chamber is the space between the piston and the head. It is where the fuel/air mixture normally burns (combustion = burning). The burning fuel/air mixture expands rapidly, pushing the piston back down the cylinder and turning the crankshaft.
- If you had flames coming out of the exhaust you had an afterfire, not a backfire
A backfire occurs when the engine fires back through the carb(s) .
An afterfire occurs when unburned fuel is ignited in the exhaust system (after it has passed through the engine).
An engine needs 3 things to run: compresion, fuel and spark.
- If the pistons are moving in the cylinders the way they should and the valves are opening & closing when they should you probably have adequate compression.
If you had the camshafts out make sure you timed them correctly when you put them back in.
Check the valve clearances and adjust if necessary.
- Your ignition timing should not normally need adjustment. If it was assembled correctly the spark should be occurring at the correct time.
Make sure that the timing advance unit was installed corectly and is moving freely.
Make sure you have the coils connected to the correct sparkplugs.
- That leaves the carbs. If you haven't already, you should clean them properly. They probably should be rebuilt too (new rubber parts to replace the 27 year old, hardened & maybe cracked originals). Go to www.randakks.com and read the information about cleaning & servicing your carbs. If you decide to rebuild them, the Randakks Master Carb Overhaul Kit is the best you will find anywhere. Randall is a top GoldWing restorer and a carb specialist. Many of the parts he sells are made exclusively for him and are not available elsewhere.
After the carbs have been cleaned properly they should be adjusted to the factory settings and then adjusted with the aid of a set of vacuum gauges.
Information on adjusting the carbs should be in your shop manual. If you don't have a shop manual you should get one - your bike is an antique and you will have a hard time finding a shop that will work on it. The sad fact is that a lot of the mechanics working now are too young to remember bikes this old and aren't interested in learning about them so that they can do a proper job since yours may be the only one they see this year. This means that you will have to do most of your own work, and working on a bike without a good shop manual is just not worth the headaches. (My bikes are from the same era - that's why I fix them myself.)
I recommend that you get two manuals - a Factory Shop Manual and a Haynes or Clymer. That way when you don't understand the explanation in one you will probably figure it out when you have read the other too. If you spend some time on Google you might even find a factory manual available for free download.
I also reommend joining the Naked GoldWings forum http://www.nakedgoldwings.com
NGW is primarily for people with GoldWings that do not have fairings, but we won't hold it against you if yours has one ;-)
There is no charge to join the forum and there are a lot of people there with a lot of experience keeping 4 cylinder GoldWings on the road. No matter what you want or need to do, someone there has probably already tried it and can tell you the easiest way to do it or why it can't be done.
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QUESTION: Well I may have misspoken about the combustion chamber. Its the middle section where the air filter goes. The plenum I think. I kinda got lucky on a factory service manual. I knew the owner of a local bike shop and he let me borrow his manual. Then he went out of business and moved.
AnswerIf you had flames in the air cleaner then you did indeed have backfire as well as an afterfire. That's not very commmon.
I have never personaly encountered something like this. My best advice (other than checking the stuff I mentioned before) would be to join the forum and ask there. Someone is bound to have better advice on this than I do.
