That's one of the funniest movies of all time, but I hate it when my bike does it. The jetting seemed to be off with a little hesitation or hiccup when dumped, not to mention more popping than Orville Reddinbacher ever did in his lifetime. A little popping is to be expected, but this was rediculous. As everyone knows by now, I have decided not to renew my DR subscription due to the quality of information being produced by that garbage plant. However, as I have been struggling with this jetting issue for some time, I cannot say that in the 12 months of recieving issues I did not receive at least 1 helpful tidbit of useful information. After knocking this problem around these forums and tweaking jetting and headscratching, the professional corporate but kissers at my now least favorite monthly periodical came up with the answer to my problem. 12 months I read the wrag cover-to-cover. I got 1 good piece of information from it. Nothing made sense about my problem. Locations change. Weather changes. Jets in a carb do not, by force of nature change. So what changed? 2 months ago, I pulled my TE-450 out of the garage for some terrific unseasonably warm weather. Having done my winter prep on Nov. of the previous year, all I had to do was recheck the oil and coolant level, tire pressure, etc, fill up the empty tank with new gas and I was ready to ride. After not riding for 5 months, the beast was not easy to wake up. I cranked it every-other-week or so during the winter, but had not ridden at all. Thus, I killed the battery trying to crank it. Upon attempting to kickstart, I noticed the compression was low. I bumped it a few times and the compression was back. I use a pipe plug and airbox cover when I was it, but some must have managed to sqeak into the engine. The ensuing light rust siezes the valves (this was in DR's Scott Summers' HUsky tips articele-o.k. that was usefull info, but I had already found that out). Next, jump start. As soon as the bike cranks it shoots a load of vaporized fuel through between the header and the exhaust nipple that it slides over, which is attched to the engine. With the engine now purring and warming up, I was off. After a full day of riding, I was sick and tired of "pop-pop-pop-pop" on decel. Something wasn't right. It didn't run this way when I got it and the jetting is very close to the way it was even after the tweaking. Nothing had helped and it looked like nothing would. Somedays later, and it may have not even been the same issue of DR, I was reading the "letter rip" section of the wrag. Some guy wrote in with a jetting question and was having the same trouble as me except with a far more inferior brand than mine. The DR guys resonded by informing him that his exhaust gaskets were leaking or his pipe was leaking soemwhere. I felt like such an idiot, in particular because of the source of the answer to my problem. I remembered the gas spray/smoke coming from the exhaust/nipple joint of my flooded engine. I could not believe that I had not thought of this earlier. I ordered the aluminum crush rings from Hall's immediately and went out to inspect the bike. Sure enough, my entire exhuast sytem had been tweakd in a crash, the memory of which came racing back to me at that moment. My header fitting on the right side of the engine was bent slightly and exhaust had been blowing right through it. In the end, replacing the crush rings behind the nipples don't help much becuase there is no seal between the headder fitting and the nipple. They are simply held in place by the springs. Since I now had them in hadn this past weekend, I replaced them anyway. To solve the issue, I had to bend the header fitting back to shape as best I could so that it fit the nippled more tightly. Then I bent the mid pipe bracket back to force the pipe to stay in the correct orientation to the nipple. After getting this all back together, warming it up and flogging it through an empty corn field for an hour, all I can say, is "WOW!". WHat a big difference an exhust leak can make. No more will I be haunted by the chanting of "POP go da weasel caw da weasel go POP!" as my riding buddies all file up to the stopping point behind the mighty TE. Yes, this is an answer that I already knew, but just didn't take the time to think it through and yes, the push to get me where I needed to be to releaize my mistake came form the infamous DR clan. I must say "thanks" to them for helping me with my problem, but I still ain't buying anymore of their damned "Ad Pak". The lesson here is that one should not get too caught up in focusing on one solution to a problem. Had I kept my head up & out of the sand, I would have cuaght this myself at the end of last summer when it started happening, just a few weeks after the incident that caused the pipe to tweak. Nothing changed. Not ,y location, not my climate and not my altitude, and jets sure don;t change themselves. What did change was the condition of my exhuast. So, if you've got what seems like a jetting issue that just sort of "popped" up (couldn't resist), and nothing else has changed, take a look at that exhuast. Even though we sometimes feel like it's not important as what goes into our engine becuase it represents something we're already done with-something that has already served our will, in the end, exhuast matters too. By the way, for those of you who are thinking about it, the other side was perfectly clean and shiny.
Sometimes we need a reminder of stuff we already know. I just acquired a ATK 406, it would not rev out and pinged hard on top. I tried jetting it with no results. Muffler was plugged up.
