I haven’t played with a carb since that same mid-70’s class I took in middle school mentioned many pages back. I pulled the thing off the engine so I could do the black paint job and it had basically been off ever since. I knew I needed to re-jet due to the new pipe/filter combo. There is a fabulous article on the Savage Forums by @Serobot on everything you need to know about this process. I highly recommend perusing that thread. I’m not going to get into details ’cause there are a ton, but the basics are I needed to use a different jet size, and change the depth of the needle jet. Both are pretty easy to do, and for the needle depth change you can either remove the stock spacer and sand down the thickness – OR go to your local Ace Hardware and buy a #4 Teflon washer, which is -exactly- the right thickness. I opted for the latter.
I picked up a set of jets and determined that I needed to go up a size due to the increased breathing the new setup provided.
The nice thing is that when I pulled the carb apart, I discovered it was in fabulous shape – no junk in there, everything nice and clean. The actual hardest part was getting the needle jet OUT to make the spacer change. The bolts that hold down the spring plate are deep in the diaphragm and pretty friggin’ tight. I got them out after some huffing and puffing, made the swap and went to put the plate and screws back in. This became a bit of a problem. I was at first using a magnetic screwdriver, but the magnet was attracting the plate as well as the screw. It became more than a little frustrating. After several attempts, I came up with a solution involving a little piece of electrical tape around the end of the screwdriver just barely holding onto the screw.
It worked great! I was able to put the two screws in, tighten them and just pull the screwdriver off. I’ll have to remember this one next time I have hard-to-reach screws.
I had to get the carb back on to test everything, and as it turned out, that was a bitch and a third. I just couldn’t get a good angle on it, and it was crazy tight. I banged my knuckles more than once and the language became colorful. I don’t know what the issue was, as poking around online suggested this should be tight but not ridiculously so. I wondered if just the length of time it had been off (months) had caused a gasket to get too dry or something. Anyway, I figured I’d try one more thing. I grabbed a ratchet strap and gently wrapped it ’round the cylinder head and carb and started tightening…about a half-ratchet at a time.
That did the trick, it snugged the carb in nice and smoothly. The only downside was I hadn’t considered that as of this point the bike still hadn’t been started, therefore the engine never got hot, therefore the black high-temp paint on the cylinder head hadn’t been cured, therefore some of it got scraped off. D’oh! No biggie, a little touch up and all would be fine.
I bolted the new filter on and was pleased with the results:
That meant something kind-of remarkable….
I could try to start it.