Carb tune

[hotred94]

I have a 2004 Softail with standard, untouched carb. It had a great romp and was hard to start when cold. I recently put a free flowing air cleaner on it which made it occasionally backfire through the carb and sometimes on deceleration. Lean right? So I read the thousands of posts about rejeting and opened the carb. I was supprised it had a 45 pilot and a 190 main. This is an unopened carb. Well, I changed to a 46 pilot, left the main alone, and shimmed the needle up by .064 (two washers), and put it back together. Now it starts easier but it has lost the HD romp, idles quite fast, sounds like a lawnmower, and no matter how I turn the air mix needle, it makes no difference. If I turn it out it idles faster, if I turn it in it runs rougher. It is currently at one turn out. It runs okay but when I turn it off it wants to keep running.

Can someone comment and tell me what I should do. Thanks

 

[glider]

Idle speed could be high with the run on. The #46 should be good, the #190 is a big large, drop back to a 180/185 and the mixture should be set to the highest and steadiest idle after warm up. Usually this is about 2 1/2 turns open for starters and go from there + or -. If you have no idle mixture control, it's usually either a defective idle screw (bottomed out at one time causing tip damage ) or the low jet is too large. It could be dumping fuel too from the float level being off.

 

[hotred94]

Well, I just went out to look at it some more and I found the rubber carb adapter to the intake had cracked from dry rot. No doubt this was leaking air. Saturday evening, all stores closed, no chance of replacement until next week. I fixed it up as best I could for now. Ran better, still had to turn down the idle adjustment screw. The air adjustment screw still not doing much but the rubber is probably still leaking some.

 

[glider]

Easy enough to change once the carb is off.