Saturday, May 28 2016 [3,852 miles]
To simplify figuring out when to give the bike a service I’m ignoring Suzuki’s suggest service schedule and will service the bike every 4K miles. It’s close enough to 4K to start the service. Plus, the tank is almost empty which makes it easier to remove.
3852 miles
Snorkel will go
Today I’m going to make a reversable carburetor modifications and pull the snorkle from the airbox. This is a common modifications that supposidly give a bit more power. I will find out. Since the changes are reversable I can always put things back. I’m also going to add an adjustable mixture (“pilot”) screw.
Carb Cable Bracket
carb control cables
The screws that hold the carb cables bracket are supposed to be a bitch to remove. I had no problem. I did use a hand impact driver with a good bit to loosen the screws, first. Once the bracket was removed I un-hooked and moved the cables out of the way then loosened the boot clamps that hold the carb and wiggled the carb off of the bike. I had already removed the various vacuum hoses.
0.020" shim installed
This is the carb modification. If you look closely you can see a silverish colored shim between the white spacer and the e-clip. It is 0.020” thick, raising the needle that amount. The bike should now be able to use the extra air it will get from removing the snorkel.
1/8" marked at 6mm
Plug drilled
Sheet metal screw
Extracted plug and pilot screw
The above pictures show how to remove the pilot screw. The screw position is set from the factory then sealed behind a plug. I drilled a hole in the plug using a 1/8” bit with a bit of masking tape marking a depth of 6mm. Don’t want to drill further than that. I also marked 6mm on a machine screw but that was not necessary. The plug started twising as I screwed in the machine screw. At that point I grabbed the screw with a pair of pliers and removed the plug.
Before removing the factory pilot screw I checked its setting. It was 1 1/4 turns out. That will be my starting point with the replacement screw.
Replacement pilot screw
Adjusted carb
The replacment screw sticks out enough to adjust with fingers. I’ll fine tune the setting after getting the bike up to operating temperature on a test ride. In the mean while I installed it 1 1/4 turns out from lightly seated.
Almost re-installed
It took me a long time to get the carb back in the bike. I eventually removed the clamp on the airbox side to give me some more room to fiddle with the boot. I got the front of the carb to slide into the engine boot but had a hard time getting the rear of the carb sealed. I wonder if there is some technique I’m missing.
After taking the picture I finished attaching vacuum and evap canister lines to the carb. Then I pulled the snorkel. I’ll take a picture of that when I get back to the bike, later.