Where to start and Merry X-mas!!

[3hunerd]

Hey all - NEVER MIND - Skip this post!!!

Hope your holiday was a joyous one and that your stockings were filled with goodies from various aftermarket manufacturers!! Now pardon my long post ....

So, I have a 250DE with a 300 top end, and I'm told, stock 250 ignition mapping. My jetting is:

N1EF needle (currently at 3rd clip)
48 pilot
180 main (bumped up from 172 from summer)
#8 slide

I am trying to get the bike ready to ice ride, and want to get it out to run it and do a plug check. I have started it a few times in the winter here in the garage, in temps ranging from 20 - 30F, and my garage is about 40 or so.

Anyhow, I have had some odd things going on, and can't seem to get a decent starting point. I don't want to burn the thing up. Anyhow, my thought was that it was running rich, and after taking the plug out to clean
it, my guess might have been right (the plug was black and carboned up). I am also blowing some spooge. I saw one of Glen's posts about the ester based synthetics, and perhaps that is contributing to that issue (though I have yet to check if the Golden Spectro I'm running is ester-based). The bike is burbling a bit and idling slow with the choke off, and I was getting a little bit of bog. All sounds like rich settings to me - right? Anyhow, when I ran it yesterday, at about twice idle, it sure sounded like I was getting some knock. I shut it off and adjusted the air screw in to 2 and 1/4. I started the bike with the choke on, and the idle started to increase a fair amount, and I shut off the choke at which point it killed. I had a backfire when trying to start it again. I did the same thing the first time I tried to get it running. Am I too rich, or too lean to start?

I'm thinking about putting the needle back in second position, then taking it out and running it on the ice and doing a plug check - I just don't want to lean it out and burn it up if it is already lean.

Thanks for your patience and help!

[cdn280]

Are you covering the rads with anything? They have lots of cooling capacity and won't come up to proper operating temperature unless you add a thermostat or cover up some of that efficient cooling.

[3hunerd]

Hey folks,

Disregard my post!!! I figured this out with some help from someone ... and the reason is a little too embarrassing!!! I'll just say the bike runs better when its not out of gas. It was more complicated than that, but that's all I can say without making too big of an idiot of myself.

The jetting worked awesome for the temps today on the ice. 38F, and the bike screamed.

~300

[Boomhauer]

Clogged fuel filter? Or perhaps you had the gas turned off or had it open just a little bit?

No shame in simple mistakes or things that are often over looked.