Carb Tech Tip

Hey, it's Mike Groan. Fix my hog. Got a great little tech tip video for you here today. Uh My favorite carbureted motorcycles. So, uh all the way up till 2006, you could buy a Harley with a carburetor on it. Uh The only problem was is uh over time, they've got this little uh plastic fuel inlet elbow and it would deteriorate. And of course, eventually, you know, aftermarket companies and Harley finally came up with the brass elbow inlet and that's kind of what we're gonna do here today is uh you know, go over that, you know, if you're on the Fix My Hog website, we've got a complete carburetor rebuild video. They show how to do this, but today we're just gonna do a quick little five minute segment and show you another procedure on how to actually extract this. So let's get started. So, ok, this is a core carburetor. Had it later on the shop, I got it, mounting a device here. Uh I got some aluminum jaws. You could have wood jaws. You wouldn't even need to put it in a vice. But for the video, it works pretty good. So we're gonna go ahead and pull this inlet off before you do that. Take a magic marker and just put a little reference line. You gotta have a little line there to refer to the angle. Uh You know, where, where it was going. Just so when you're, you're putting a new one in, you're gonna line that up. Keep it simple. And this is kind of what it looks like. I've already got one taken apart. And if you watch the carb rebuild video, here's what Bob's really stressing. You know, people, what they like to do is they get a vice grip and the first thing they do is they take and just crank on this thing and they distort it. And what he's worried about is distorting the part that goes into the carburetor because if you distort this, then you're going to distort the car body, then your new fuel inlet valve is gonna leak. So that's what we're trying to do here. So we're just trying to basically rip this piece of plastic off this brass fitting here that's got gnarling on it. So I got a little battery power players here and you can just take and kind of turn it nice and slow and you're, you're just kind of looking to kind of deteriorate this plastic, see how I kind of broke that edge off and there. So they got that out of the way. And here's the tricky part. Now, Bob's got a really good way of doing this. What, what he did is he, he tapped it out with a tap and then he built a little polar and pulls it out straight out of the way. Well, if you don't want to go through the hassle of making a polar, there's probably another way you can do it here. And what we're gonna do is just kind of incrementally keep drilling the center of this hole out in oversized steps just to kind of weaken that wall. Then we can lightly grab it and pull it out. So let's try that. So for your reference, uh, you know, I got a drill bit here. It's 230,000. So that's gonna be our first one. And of course, you're really gonna wanna pay attention. You kind of look at your drill bit this way, look at it that way. You're trying to keep that thing straight up and down and the tables just about all the way through. There's actually room for the drill bit to go beyond. And like I said before, this is a core carburetor who will be cleaning it all up anyway, if it was your carb, you'd have the choke plunger blocked off. You'd probably have the bottom blocked off. We're doing this for the video. It doesn't matter. Take that drill bit out. Now, I'm gonna sneak up onto it. I got a 260 thousands drill bit. Give her a little check, see where you're at. Ok. I'm all the way through with the second drill bit. And now this is the part where you, you don't want to distort the housing. So here's kind of what I came up with. Um, if uh anybody has a reverse drill bit set at home, you always get these extractors uh for extracting. You know, if you break AAA bolt off in somewhere, you hit it with a reverse drill bit and then you, you take this little driver and you turn it in the opposite way here and it kind of locks it in. Ok. So with the old fuel elbow out, uh we're gonna go ahead and warm this carburetor up because it's interference fit. Now, ideally if you're at home, go ahead and throw this thing in the freezer right away because you want that thing to shrink up. We're gonna warm this up to get it expanded. We've got our magic marker line. So you're kind of looking at that like that, that's how it's gonna go. Um Got a little hammer here. That's what we're gonna drive it in with. So you got a heat gun start playing a little heat and it's probably gonna take a little while just because uh it's kind of a aluminum is kind of a huge heat sink, ok. So we got the old fuel uh elbow out of there and really, you know, if you're at home doing this whole procedure. You're gonna be taking this carburetor and you're gonna be thoroughly cleaning it. Obviously, this is a car carburetor. It's not probably going back on a motorcycle looks pretty clean. So we're gonna set that back in here. Just kind of cinch it up. You just want to keep it, so it doesn't go anywhere. Now, uh, we're gonna play a little heat to it being an aluminum body. It's kind of a huge heat sink. It might take a little bit, but this is one thing you really don't want to force or rush because uh if you bust this housing, you're buying a new carburetor. I think it gets it pretty hot. Ok? It's probably enough. Ok? Pull your little fuel elbow out of the freezer and really pay attention to, you know, having this thing straighten upright and I'm trying to see if I'm doing that right. Got my angle set. How does that look looking good? Looks good to me? Perfect. Let her cool down a little bit. Ok. Now I'm gonna show you another little procedure that kinda if, if the bike is actually uh right from the factory, they come with a limiter cap that goes over the air fuel mixture, screw and uh I'll show you where it is here. So if you look at that, this thing still got the fuel limiter cap on here, which is hard to believe because the motorcycle really runs bad with the air fuel screw in the factory position because they're trying to make this motorcycle pass emissions, then they put a tamper proof cover on there so you can't tamper with it. So it's the, the motorcycle just doesn't run good in the factory position. So what we're gonna do, we're gonna put it back in the vice center punch that and we're gonna use a reverse drill bit to pull that out of there. So here we go. Now you could do this in a motorcycle with a right angle drill. It's kind of cumbersome. But if you're going through cleaning your carburetor, rejet it or whatever, it's just way easier to do out of the bike. So get a punch or automatic centering punch, whatever you got, just stake it right there. No, and then, uh, get yourself a reverse drill bit, throw a Vern around there. 125,000. So eight inch drill, bit, reverse drill bit there again, debris is going to get all over. We don't care. It's our core carburetor. If it's your carburetor, you want to clean everything up, have it cleaned up protected. Ok. So you're on why? The reverse drill bit? Well, because when you drill into it, you heard me go through it and you heard me hit the head of the screw. If you would have had a traditional drill bit going, you know, clockwise, it hits that the head of the low fee, low fuel air mixture screw and it rams it in the carburetor and you could potentially bring the little tip of that off in the carburetor. Now, you can throw the carburetor away and get a new one. So we use a reverse drill bit, hits the head of the screw backs, the low speed screw out of the carburetor. Nothing gets hurt. Now, another special tool that I made about 30 years ago or 35 years ago is this really high tech extractor? It's just basically a, a wood screw with a cap nut and a hole in it. And basically all you're doing is screwing it in here. You wouldn't have to use that. You could just use a wood screw and a player's, I just happen to have this in my toolbox. That's it. Pop it out. Now, you got your limiter cap off and uh not yet. You got access to your low speed air fuel screw. It's just something you're gonna wanna do. If the lender cat's still on a motorcycle, it's gonna improve the idle quality 100%. So. All right. Well, once again, check out, fix my hog. I got the full carb rebuild on there and it's a great video. So, thanks for tuning it in.