Sunday, September 16, 2012

A thing that happened - loose jets

My pickup truck has been giving me trouble lately and I am in the process of hunting down the problem. It's something simple. I know it is. Still, pain in my ass.

I needed to take the truck to the muffler shop and loaded the Elite 80 in the back so I could ride it home. It was riding well most of the way but on the last stretch of road, it sort of popped and lost about 80% power. My brain began running down a list of possible problems.

I pulled over to check the exhaust. It was clear with some white puffs. That's good. Black exhaust would mean it was burning oil and something serious had happened. The engine died and when I started it again, it would not idle on it's own. I had to hold the throttle open. I nursed it the last couple of hundred feet home and parked it.

I checked the vacuum and fuel lines. I checked the spark plug cable was tight. I pulled the carburetor and opened the bowl to check the jets and found the problem. The idle jet had vibrated loose. It hadn't fallen out, but had worked itself back enough that the vaporizing vents had been covered.

While I had the carb open, I went ahead and cleaned the jets and passageways. Once I had it all back together, it ran better than it did before.

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