Thursday 28 April 2016

A100 Restoration: Carb Refurbish

Quite a while ago I put in a very large order to DiscountBikeSpares.co.uk. Included in that order was a carburetor rebuild kit which contained the following:

Gasket, needle valve, mixture screw, main jet (75), pilot jet (36), jet needle (with retainers)


I used three main resource:the service manual, the Haynes manual and a video on YouTube by Ginger Geordie Biker (this guy is worth subscribing to - he has some very cool videos). 
Official Service Manual / Haynes Manual







Anyway, here is the carburetor out of the engine: 

Ready for rebuilding
It is nice to have the service manual which gives all the specs and an exploded view of the carb. The official Suzuki service manual is surprisingly helpful.
Relevant page
I also really like using the propor JIS screwdrivers when working on my old bike as all the screws are not actually Phillips like most people would assume. They are Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS). Using a Phillips driver on a JIS screw often results in the screwdriver camming out, ruining the screw.

My lovely JIS drivers
Once I was into the carb, I started removing jets and valves for inspection. Note how dirty and plugged the pilot jet is! Gross! The other jets were not bad, but since I bought new ones, they will be replaced.
Just call me Benny. Here are my jets.

I decided to replace all the old parts with the new parts for peace of mind (including needle jet, mixture screw, etc.) I made sure to consult my manuals to make sure the new jets were the same sizes as the old.

I also gave the carb a real good cleaning with some carb cleaner I bought off a friend who had not used it all on his last project.

Carb cleaner (for carburetors, not spaghetti)

Another thing you must do is make sure the float is set at the right height. The floats are responsible for actuating the needle valve which fills the float bowl. The manual and Haynes manual were not super clear about the setting. It seemed one wanted me to measure without a gasket installed and the other wanted me to measure from the gasket face. I ended up installing the gasket and then doing the measurement because without the gasket I would have had to do a ton of adjusting. With the gasket installed, I did have to adjust it a few millimeters.

Float adjusting
I put everything back together following the manual and set the needles to the factory settings; ready to tune!
Clean and shiny. Ready for reinstallation!

Monday 25 April 2016

New T-Shirt Design

Have your answer already printed on your shirt for about 90% of all the questions you get throughout the day. Why go to work? because motorcycle. Why do you need all these tools? because motorcycle. Why are you always smiling so much? ... You get the idea