• 4 Stroke Husqvarna Motorcycles Made In Austria - About 2014 & Newer
     FE = 4st Enduro & FC = 4st Cross

  • Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

FE/FC Fuel conditioning?

Huskynoobee said:
I've been told that AV gas is formulated to run drier? I think that's the term, to prevent carb icing at altitude. Whatever the deal is when it comes right down to it, ethanol diluted pump isn't made for motorcycles either! There's a big push right now to lobby congress to prevent the EPA from implementing their next imperial edict to make every station sell 15%
Click to expand...
I wonder what it is that they use as a drying agent, I guess that's all the more reason to run a cap full of synthetic 2 stroke oil in the 4 stroke fuel, 2 strokes should have it covered.
 
I am using Sunoco 112 octane leaded mixed with 91 octane ethanol free. 50/50 mix.
works out to 7 dollars a gallon.
 
Just a thought doesn't all high Octane fuel burn slower thus helping prevent ping or detonation in higher compression/performance engines?
 
Huskynoobee said:
Just a thought doesn't all high Octane fuel burn slower thus helping prevent ping or detonation in higher compression/performance engines?
Click to expand...


Off topic, but somewhat related to octane - In a previous life I raced a Suzuki Ltz400 in the woods. That machine ran BETTER on 87 octane fuel than anything else. One of my sponsors (Laz from GT Thunder) told me that it was due to the head design on that particular motor. I used to laugh as I was winning A class races on that machine, racing against the finicky 450's.
 
VP110 is even higher octane and slower burning so once you have your high performance engine tuned for race fuel you actually take advantage of these characteristics by advancing the timing and or leaning out the fuel mixture which will give you more mid range torque without detonation. I've re-tuned my sons YZ450 with a GYTR tuner to take advantage of race fuel or AV100 and there is a noticeable seat of the pants difference in performance. The same is true for my WR250 Husky which had to be de-tuned/rich on pump gas so not to ping/detonate at lugging low rpm but with race fuel could be tuned lean and crisp from bottom to top.
 
letitsnow said:
Off topic, but somewhat related to octane - In a previous life I raced a Suzuki Ltz400 in the woods. That machine ran BETTER on 87 octane fuel than anything else. One of my sponsors (Laz from GT Thunder) told me that it was due to the head design on that particular motor. I used to laugh as I was winning A class races on that machine, racing against the finicky 450's.
Click to expand...
If your engine is lower compression and tuned for the faster burning low octane fuel you don't benefit from race fuel. If you would have switched to a high compression head or if it was a 4 stroke with a cam profile to raise static compression and a high compression head then anything but race fuel would destroy the engine.

In respect to this thread "fuel conditioning" octane is relevant because higher octane race fuels are by nature "more pure" distilled off the top of the vapor, kind of like the cream that rises to the top so they are going to evaporate cleanly rather than leave behind gum and varnish an corrode so race fuel doesn't need additives the way pump gas does. Keep in mind pump gas is really a much lesser fuel that already has additives just to raise the octane to 87 or 91 so when the additives evaporate off or begin to absorb moisture your 91 octane starts going down hill fast... additives like Stabil slow this process down.
 
Has anybody used Liquid Performance ethanol equalizer? Central Jersey Cycles where I got my 2015 FE 350 recommended this and I have been using it. Have 2100 miles and have had no problems with the bike at all. Bob at Central Jersey told me the most problems he sees with bikes coming in for problems is fuel related. Said ethanol is bad.
 
Carburetor icing can occur in any piston engine if altitude, moisture, ambient temperature and other atmospheric conditions are met. It doesn't have to be freezing out for this to happen though.

This would of course occur in air cooled engines especially, as there is no warm engine coolant flowing through the engine that would prevent this. Or the addition of both exhaust gasses and engine coolant through the intake manifold tract like on some cars that prevent this.

Some motorcycles can definitely suffer from carburetor icing more than others. Fuel injected motorcycles suffer from this phenomenon much less because their is little or no taper, or venturi effect on a throttle body. FI components can freeze though and that includes parts associated with operation of the butterfly valve. Not good.

A pod type filter on a motorcycle with a carb is more prone to this carb icing phenomenon than a properly designed airbox equipped motorcycle.

Why does this happen ?

It could be 60-70 degrees Fahrenheit out there and if there is enough humidity in the air the Carburetor's venturi affect, alone can drop the incoming ambient air temperature up to 30-40 degrees F., enough to cause the "water vapor" in the air to freeze, thereby causing carburetor icing. This ice is the result of the air freezing and it happens at the surfaces of the carbs throat, before it ever even begins to start mixing with any gasoline. This causes an immediate rich running condition.

This is more of an airbox or engine design flaw though, rather than a fuel issue. High levels of humidity is what causes carb icing.

Since this is winter time and many of us do run pump gas. That does have ethanol in it. Using a fuel conditioner that takes care of that ethanol is a good idea.

Additionally, if you ride in the snow and the snow flakes are really large. This is an indication of a higher amount of moisture/humidity in the air. If it's powdery snow, not so much.

If its cold enough outside and all the other atmospheric conditions are just right. Carburetor ice can occur.

Even at 60-70 degrees F. Which is considered cold for where I'm at, in AZ.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top