Phoned Phil Pilgrim at Union Jack (“no question too difficult”) and pleaded “Doc, ya gotta help me!”
After only 30 secs of listening to my sniveling he cut in and said “Your pilot jets are blocked, compressed-air will not unblock them because there is more than one way for air to escape, you will have to run a piece of 15-amp fuse wire through the tiny hole of each jet, then take two aspirin and call me again in the morning.”
So I went and did all that. Took particular care to run the fuse wire through all of the pilot jet orifi, especially the two pin-holes through to the carb venturi. I did not see any gubbins or shit fall out, however. I followed up with more compressed-air, this time using various fingertips to in turn block up three of the four ways that air can escape from the pilot circuit.
At this time I found that soaking in petrol for a week causes inlet-stub O-ring rubbers to expand, if they are not left seated in their grooves. One was, one wasn’t. The one that wasn’t was now way too long to seat back in its groove. Lucky I have an Amal “carb tune-up” gaskets kit on standby, for that proverbial rainy day (one can’t just run down to the nearest 7/11 store for this kind of stuff here in Fiji).
Tuned the carbs: they now both respond to Tuning Stage 1 as they should. Each pot runs best at 1 turn out, faltering at ½ and 1 ½ turns out from “seated” position. Bike idles okay, with only occasional hesitation that I have come to regard as normal.
Went for a blat around the Suva Marine Parade (our scenic route). The bike is again quite pleasant to ride. Smooth, powerful, and with good clean pick-up in the mid-range.
Just as a Bonnie should.
