Also ever since i went to the new petcock i've kept it on the ON position but i've been having problems starting the bike and needs the aid of starter fluid. Looks like i'm gonna keep a bottle of it at work just in case.
First of all, go get the starting fluid, walk out into your front yard and throw it as far as you can. Leave it, come back in the house and continue reading.
Actually, let's be a little more socially responsible here, don't just throw it as far as you can, please dispose of it in a proper manner.
And ... that "proper manner" is NOT one squirt at a time into your engine.
It is far too easy to get carried away with starting fluid. Too many people spray it, using the old drag racer's philosophy: "If some is good, more is better, then too much must be enough." WRONG!! A properly-adjusted and maintained engine will start so quickly you might wonder if you actually pushed the starter button.
And, hard starting is a tale tell sign of a needed valve adjustment. Do you know when the valves were adjusted last ? Does the bike run much better after it's warmed up ?
Larry is very correct here. Hard starting when cold is a classic sign of tight valves. Take a couple of hours, adjust your valves, your bike will thank you for it. Actually after doing it a few times, you can get a valve adjustment down to under an hour. I'm just allowing you some extra time to do it your first time.
Carbs were opened and sprayed with cleaner, unfortunately not dipped.
Then, unfortunately, YOUR CARBS ARE NOT NECESSARILY CLEAN. Unless you have been running the bike regularly with no problems ever since the last (proper) cleaning, you should assume that they need some work. The two biggest causes of carb problems are time and time. Yeah, that's right. Gas has components that will evaporate, leaving a gummy residue that will clog the small passages in the carb body. This process takes time. If you ride enough to put fresh gas in every two months OR you have treated the gas with a stabilizer, you should be OK. (If someone only has to fill the tank every two months, why even bother having the bike?
)
The
other time factor is related to the o-rings and gaskets in the carbs. Let's face it, they have gone through thousands of heat cycles over the last 25-30 years and they are just plain worn out and dried up. Replace them. You can get a new set of o-rings from cycleorings.com for less than $15. New float bowl gaskets are $12-13 from Z1. A can of Berryman's Carb Dip is $20 from Auto Zone. For about $50, you can have your carbs working as good as, or better than, new.
try putting the petcock in the prime position for a minute or two then back to on (or res if your low on gas) and see how it starts.
When reading what u wrote, i assumed ur faulty petcock prevented you from running the bike for a bit, so the float bowls might be starved and need "priming"
Priming the float bowls should not be necessary on any kind of a regular basis. The last time I was out of town, I was gone for six weeks. When I got back, I set the "choke" on my son's 850 and hit the starter. No problems at all. Evidently it takes more than six weeks to get the fuel level low enough to make a difference. :-k
placed petcock on prime and no luck ended up floating the bowls . Cold mornings i need the starter fluid to start and will die without choke. When its warmed up from the freeway when i get to work 17 miles away it'll hold idle at 2k. after 8 hours of work the bike is back to not starting and needs the fluid to kick in in prime or on the ON position.
Several issues here:
Did you "float" the bowls or "flood" them? If you "flooded" them by putting the petcock in PRIME, you have bad float needle valves in the carbs. They should hold back anything the petcock can deliver with no problems. A proper cleaning and maybe replacement of the float valves will take care of that.
No, you don't need starter fluid, you need to clean the carbs properly and adjust the valves. And yes, most engines
will die without "choke". However, you should be able to turn off the "choke" within a minute, or about the time it takes to get your jacket, helmet and gloves on.
If your bike is idling at 2K, you need to make more adjustments. Proper idle speed is closer to 1100.
You'll need to do a valve adjustment, and make sure you have no air /vacuum leaks on your carbs. If you haven't heard, starting fluid is evil. It can very easily destroy a piston due to extreme heat of combustion in the cylinder. It doesn't take a lot of times starting with starting fluid to melt a piston top, they are made of aluminum. In the days of steel pistons and low compression you could get by with the stuff, not so anymore.
It's not so much the aluminum vs. steel issue, it's the way the starting fluid 'burns'. It doesn't actually
burn, it EXPLODES. It lights so quickly and violently, there is a lot of shock and stress to the pistons, rods and crank. The more you spray, the bigger the shock, the quicker the damage. I have used it many times to get a diesel engine going in my Peterbilt, but I was shown the proper way to do it and how LITTLE it takes to do the job, even in a big Cummins engine.
Again, clean carbs, valves adjusted to specs and toss in some new spark plugs, you won't recognize how your bike runs. :-\\\
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. Cold mornings i need the starter fluid to start and will die without choke. When its warmed up from the freeway when i get to work 17 miles away it'll hold idle at 2k. after 8 hours of work the bike is back to not starting and needs the fluid to kick in in prime or on the ON position.
