A Tale of Four Carburetors
So, I got my bike back yesterday morning from my mechanic (who I’ll refer to as “G”). This is my bike:
Me: Hello?
G: Hey, Steve, I’ve got your bike ready for you.
Me: Hey, great! What was going on with it?
G: Well, first I… *spends next five solid minutes describing all the different things that had been wrong*
Me: …
G: But, hey, there were some parts that I thought I’d need to replace, but they turned out to be fine, so that saved you $200.[2]
Me: …
G: So, anyway, after I got got the float bowls cleaned out, I noticed that somebody had put the wrong size … * spends just over five more minutes describing different things that had gone wrong, followed by rousing tales of the various and sundry heroics that he’d performed to fix them *
G: Anyway, she’s running like new, and I think you’ll be really pleasantly surprised at higher RPMs… yeah, so, that’ll be $XYZ.
Me: Eeeep.
The whole way through G’s ten-minute Litany-of-Mechanical-Disaster/Journey-Into-the-Heart-of-Mechanical-Darkness, I had been mentally trying to estimate what the total cost would end up being (as one does when listening to mechanics, doctors, lawyers, etc. describe their efforts on your behalf). As recital continued, and the minutes ticked by, my estimate (and feelings of dread) grew, until by the end I was fully expecting that he would request a kidney or options on offspring as more efficient means of payment than cash. Luckily for my kidneys, the total ended up being somewhat less than I’d feared… but quite a bit more than I’d hoped.
His tale began with the carburetor float bowls (his initial hypothesis had been that one of the needle valves was stuck and causing the fuel to leak[3]) and continued through, essentially, my bike’s entire fuel system. The adventure included the carbs themselves (which apparently had some mismatched seals on one cylinder, and strange mystery parts on another), and in the other direction meandered through various and sundry fuel filters (clogged beyond recognition) and ultimately to the gas tank, which contained what was apparently a startling amount of schmutz. Basically, if there was something that could go wrong with a carbureted motorcycle’s fuel system, he’d run into a case of it on this particular bike.
My mechanic, who has seen this bike several times over the last couple of years, and is something of a specialist in early-eighties Yamahas, was in fact shocked to find out how bad the situation was: the bike itself typically runs pretty well, especially considering its age, and he says that although he’d noticed some hesitation in the past at very high RPMs, he’d always thought that it felt otherwise fine. I’d certainly always thought it felt fine, as well— it never got amazing mileage, but I had always attributed that to the fact that the motor was thirty years old and had four cylinders (hardly the most fuel-efficient design ever created).
Well, at any rate, the whole thing’s been sorted out— salvageable parts cleaned and de-corroded, other parts replaced, fuel tank glass-bead-blasted, etc. etc. etc.— and after picking it up yesterday morning and riding it a bit, all I can say is: ZOMFG. My checking account may be in the corner, curled up in a fetal position and whimpering… but my bike is purring like a kitten, and has a smug look on its face.[4] It’s like a whole different bike. Scratch that, it is a whole different bike. It accelerates completely differently (read: way the heck better than it had ever accelerated since I bought it), which means that it handles completely differently in curves, and so on and so forth. The engine idle is way smoother (I’d never thought of it as particularly rough before now), and its power output stays way steadier as RPMs increase (I’d never realized how unsteady it was). Hopefully, the gas mileage will improve, as well. I’d never thought of my bike as having any particular performance problems before, but that’s probably because I didn’t have an accurate baseline to compare it to. Sort of like when I first got glasses, when I was ten years old: I’d never realized how much detail and texture the world had until I could suddenly see it.
I don’t really know what the moral of this story is, other than to have your carbs checked out even if you don’t suspect any particular problem. These old Japanese bikes are apparently indestructible— mine was running well enough to be used as a daily commuter bike for the last couple of years, even with its fuel system this screwed up— so yours might seem to be running “pretty well” and still have all sorts of sturm und drang going on internally. Your bike will thank you…
[1] Incidentally, I highly recommend Rubber Side Down for all of your Portland-area motorcycle towing needs. They were extremely responsive, really knew what they were doing, and were surprisingly affordable.
[2] Note to anybody thinking about buying a motorcycle: if the bike you’re looking at has, oh, I don’t know, four cylinders, keep in mind that each of those comes with its own fuel injector or carburetor, and that anything that needs fixing in one cylinder/carb/injector probably will eventually end up needing to be fixed in all four. $50 part * 4 cylinders/carbs/injectors = $200. Somewhat relatedly, if you have what we shall refer to as a “motorcycle of a certain age”, you may find yourself in the unenviable position of needing to obtain four difficult-to-find parts instead of just one or two. Yeeee-haw. A friend of mine rides a 650cc one-cylinder bike, and I can hear her laughing at me, Nelson-style, even as I type this.
[3] He was right about this, although in the end it turned out to be the least of my bike’s problems in the carburetor department. And, of course, the valve wasn’t just stuck: it was stuck in some sort of strange way— sideways? upside down? both?— that he’d never seen before. While he was recounting this particular piece of the saga to me, I was reminded of the stories that surgeons like to tell about abnormal organs, or the interesting things they find inside people’s stomachs.
[4] Those phenomena do tend to go hand in hand… I henceforth define this as Bedrick’s First Law of Motorcycles: The respective healths of one’s bike and one’s checking account are inversely related.