How to Kickstart a Harley with a Super E Carb
Bruce TessmerDescription
So, you wanna kickstart a Harley? Since absorbing the Flathead power brand, S&S Cycle has had an influx of customers contacting their tech support with questions on kickstarting a Harley-Davidson.
In this video, S&S Cycle’s Wally Cahill and Bruce Tessmer give us a little insight and a demonstration on how to kickstart a Harley-Davidson with an S&S Super E carburetor. An added benefit of kickstarting a Harley with an S&S Super E or G carburetor is that these carburetors utilize an enrichener circuit rather than a choke.
Utilizing the S&S carburetor’s enrichener, along with its accelerator pump, makes for a much easier kick or electric start of a Harley-Davidson. As Bruce demonstrates, positioning the enrichener lever up approximately 80%, along with two full wicks of the throttle is all you should need to easily kickstart a Harley that is correctly tuned.
However, every Harley is a little bit different. All carbureted motorcycles seem to have their own unique personalities. Temperature, altitude, and humidity will also come into play when starting a carbureted Harley. A rider will learn his or her own routine for successful kickstarts.
Maybe, the enrichener lever only needs to be opened halfway. Maybe three full throttle wicks work best. Sometimes, it works best to kick the motor over a couple times with the ignition in the OFF position in order to better prime the engine. Experiment to find a method that works best for you.
Remember, there are a number of other important variables which come into play that will determine how well (or how poorly) a carbureted Harley-Davidson will start. It is important that the motorcycle is correctly timed. If running points, make sure the contacts are correctly gapped.
Also, the carburetor needs to be accurately adjusted with no air leaks at the intake. Make sure to be running a quality set of spark plugs that are properly gapped. If you are running a well-tuned Harley-Davidson with an S&S carburetor, kickstarting is easy to do.
One more notable benefit: starting your hog with one or two kicks. It doesn’t get much cooler!
Thank you S&S Cycle for sharing this video with us. Learn more at the company’s website.
More Carb Videos Here
S&S offers all kinds of performance products, but you know the vintage bikes, they really, really like those. And a lot of us like those too. But one thing that we've realized over the years, we've gotten used to those electric starters, so when it comes back time to kickstart a bike, we either didn't know how or we forgotten how. Bruce here is gonna show us the proper way to do a kickstart bike. That's right, Wally. Since we've bought the Flathead Power brand, we've got a lot of people calling up and asking, "How do I kickstart this thing?" and "I'm having trouble with it." There are some pretty simple techniques that you can do to make this thing work pretty well. Now I bought this bike shortly after I started working here in S&S. That was like 1989. And it was a semi basket and it didn't have an electric starter. This is an FXE, it should have one, but it didn't. So I learned how to kickstart pretty quickly because you have to. I'm running a Super E carburetor on this bike and something about the Super E carburetors, and this is a little different than the stock carburetors, is that the Super E has an enrichment circuit, and you engage that by pulling this lever up, and then I generally push it back down about an eighth of an inch when I start this bike, if you had a larger motor you might want to leave it up. If whatever works is what you do, and everybody has their own way of doing this. So I turn on the gas, and I always turn the gas off because I'm just that kind of guy, I grabbed the throttle, I give it two squirts with the accelerator pump. If it's really cool out, below 50 degrees, I might give it three or four, but it happens to be October here in Wisconsin, but it's like 70 degrees, it's very nice, I like that. Anyway, then I turn on the key, and I'm gonna give it two kicks and it will be running. Damn, first kick. What did I tell you, come on guys. Hey, there you go Now there are other guys that have different ways of doing this. Some guys will pull up the enricher and kick it through about two or three times before they turn the key on. It seems to work for them. And this works for me. So I'm sticking with it.
Share tips, start a discussion or ask other students a question. If you have a question for the instructor, please click here.
Already a member? Sign in
No Responses to “How to Kickstart a Harley with a Super E Carb”