The bike came to me with 42.5 pilots instead of 40 and 117.5 mains. I left the pilots and put in 120 mains because , hey , gotta pipe on it. One ride later I was back to 117.5 but still rich. I used the newish air filter it came with but found it soaked in K&N red oil. Try as I did I could not clean it all out so bought a new one. It weighed half as much as what I was using and that improved things greatly. An ounce of oil goes a long way and Red oil is great for K&N filter, not good for foam. My bad for not catching that on the rebuild but you all know how it goes.
So it's running ok but mileage is not great. Even steady high way yields only 32 at best. Around town and low speed is bad mileage and black smoke. So I changed the pilots to 40. Except I used the wrong style, and they fit perfectly too. Fortunately I got the right ones in and what a difference that made. Many people up the pilot jets but stock worked just fine for my bike.
i dropped the mains to 115 and now I'm getting 35-38 mpg. Not bad and I took a long trip like that. But the pipe is a little sooty still, the plug color is dark, and the bike lacks that certain snap my 650 has. Now 115 is default factory standard baseline mains value but I went below that to 112.5. Sometimes you have to look at the results and follow what they say.
On the road it's perfect. No lean issues, the plugs are light tan in color and the pipe is clean now. Haven't checked mileage but I bet it's over 40 mpg now. I'm loving this bike more and more.
The moral of this story is follow the results and don't be led by others results alone. If jetting advice is not working out don't be afraid to buck it and go with what works. Make sure all the other issues are cleared, like filter oil, float levels, carb boots and valve adjustments. My compression is about 130-135 hot. After all the other issues are ruled out you can make an honest determination about jetting.
Along the way I verified the float levels with home made tubes on tapped drains, sealed the air box well and invested in new air box boots and clamps. The floats were fine and the boots were probably ok but eliminating any issue allowed me to focus on the jetting.
i won't tell you to lean out the bike or any other sage advice except to follow the results and don't accept a poor running bike that wastes gas.
i expect a few people will be along to disagree with my jetting choice but if they rode my bike they would nod in approval.
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