Motorcycle Repair: 1988 yamaha tt 225cc, path of least resistance, triumph chopper

Question
this bike does some strange stuff. sometimes runs very good but then just cuts out. that was from flooding. we fixed that but it still cuts out the same way and noting comes out the over flow. and just now the header pipe glows bright orange and almost goes white it runs sort of ok with a little bit of back firing some times it idles and sometimes it don't dad checked the exhaust valves there ok what can we do

Answer
Hi Alan...

Sorry for the delay...
A glowing orange header pipe is NOT good. I have only seen that happen once on my old Triumph chopper... and it scared me. When a carb floods, there are four places the excess gas can go. one is out the overflow tube. Another is out the float bowl air vent, the third is directly into the cylinder, and the fourth is into the airbox. Gas (being a liguid) will follow the path of least resistance and is bound by gravity to stay as low as possible. Therefore, I would suspect that your carb is still flooding. The spark plug also fires on the exhaust stroke... so if there is extra fuel hanging around the exhaust stroke will ignite it. This can lead to the overheating issue that caused your pipe to glow. Pull the carb and manually check it for flooding. Two things can cause the flooding. The float bowl needle is not seating tightly enough to shut off fuel flow or the float bowl tang is set wrong, allowing too much fuel into float bowl. Check these two issues and I think you'll find one of them will be at fault!!

Jack