Gassy smell.

[Guest]

The bike is a stock 83 550E with recently cleaned and rebuilt carbs with fresh o-rings and intake boot o-rings. Jets are stock and its air mixture screws are set at 2.5 turns out.

The bike runs well and pulls strong with no hesitation in all gears. It now idles steadily at around 1100 rpm.

Yesterday I was out and about for several hours and after an hour or so i noticed a distinct gassy smell from the exhaust when I came to stops. That indicates to me it is running a tad rich. I have not performed a plug chop to confirm.

I am now wondering if I have an issue with my airmixture screw settings as I have recently come to understand that turning them out too far may over richen the mixture in the idle circuit. I had always believed that 2.5 turns was optimal but I'm now wondering about that.

After trying to help Gatekeeper with his carb issues and reading what KoolaidKid had written I don't think I had a proper understanding of how these carbs work but worse I am now quite confused. In an effort to eliminate this smell should I now be turning the screws in a bit?

As always all comments are appreciated.

Cheers,
Spyug

[tom203]

Can you determine which exhaust side the smell is coming from? Maybe the petcock is leaking gas down its vacuum line during the higher vacuum at idle and causing a rich mixture.