Motorcycle Repair: 1982 Honda CB900C, pollution restrictions, american motorcycle

Question
My bike don't have its air cleaner and I'm having problems setting up the carbs. How can I set up (fine tune) these carbs, or make them work as racing carbs? Additionally, I need to use starting fluid when the bike is cold. Please tell me how can I fix these problems. Thank you in advance.

Luis
Puerto Rico

Answer
Hi Luis, I will try to be as gentle as I can...take your stock carbs off your motorcycle and throw them in the trash.
That is the best advice I could offer you. They were/are junk from the factory. Too small and restrictive, constantly plugging up with the smallest bit of dirt, not tuneable and Vacuum operated. The bike just wont ever be really happy until its fitted with a set of 29mm to 32mm Mikuni Smoothbores. The stock carbs are impossible to tune, even for me. This is due to there age and the fact that other people have tried to work on them. If you came to my shop with this problem I would warn you right away that you could spend just as much money at a shop trying to repair/ tune the stock carbs as you would getting some quality Mikunis. The reason why (in case your wondering} these carbs are so bad is America back in the late seventies and early 80s was imposing nearly impossible restrictions on Japenese motorcycles imported to the US. One of these restrictions was EPA noise and pollution restrictions. The bikes had to pass ridicules standards to enter the country. The Crafty Japenese got around this by designing carbs that were extrememly lean and too small for the engines with little to no adjustment. America just didn't want the bikes period because these bikes were putting American motorcycle manufacture Harley Davidson out of buisness. I hope this was helpful  

    randy