How to balance your carbs.

[yorkie]

Carburettor Balancing C & F's.
E's have different carbs and the adjuster screws are underneath to the rear, so the airbox does not need to be removed, but its hard to fit the take off's.

Tools.

1. Paddock or ABBA stand.
2. Kawasaki carb take offs 92150-1161 x2 for cylinder's 2 & 3, washers use the blanking bolt one's. If you have Morgan carbtune http://www.carbtune.co.uk/, then there’s some with it, but if you sell the bike you’ll forget about them, and loose them. Also Breather tube to link them afterwards 92059-1916 x1.
3. Philips screwdriver, about 6 to 7 inches long, as things get in the way. Removing fuel tap, side fairings, air inlets and adjusting carbs.
4.Top Tip, A 3mm ball headed Allen driver, 6 to 7 inches long, Halfords £5 ish, or http://cpc.farnell.com/jsp/search/pr...crosssell=true £3 ish, or www.hdtools.co.uk 3 MM Bondhaus Long Arm Ball End Hex Key Tel 01798 813837 £3 +P&P, for undoing carbs inlets.
5. A 10mm socket, for removing seats, tank, air box etc. Plus 8mm deep sockets for vacuum take off fitting.
6. Extension bar and handle, 4 to 6 inches long. For above.
7. Pair of chunky stubby pliers for sliding back fuel pipe clip.
8. A big flat bladed screwdriver, for prizing off fuel pipe.
9. Small maglite torch or similar, to help locate adjuster screws if dark.
10. Some white airfix paint for highlighting adjuster screws.
11. Kitchen roll for blanking carbs and inlet manifold apertures to stop stuff falling in.
12. A meter of clear flexible pipe, so you can see the fuel coming from tank to fuel pump. B&Q 1cm wide 100cm long.
13. At least 2 Litres of fuel in tank.
14. A table somewhere close to place the fuel tank. If not resting securely on rear seat area.
15. Somewhere to hang carb kit.
16. A Mate to give you a hand to hold carbs, moral support, make cups of tea, and to laugh when you drop stuff down the back of the engine.

Where to start?

1. Exhaust pointing out of garage.
2. Side and front fairings remove. You don’t have to, but the air intakes can get in the way.
3. Remove rear seat, then undue 10mm bolt to remove front seat.
4. Turn fuel to off, and remove fuel tap, with Philips driver.
5. Prize off fuel pipe with flat bladed driver, after sliding clip back with pliers. There will be a little fuel spillage, don't worry about it.
6. Undo the 2 rear and 2 forward bolts securing the fuel tank. Remove tank and put somewhere safe.
7. Now would be a really good time to clean the carb heater coolent filter, its inside the plastic bottle at the back of No 4 cylinder, put a cloth under it and slide the clips back either side of the bottle, remove bottle, and filter is in the fatter end clean with tooth brush and water. There will be a small amount of coolant spillage but not much, refit filter extra job done. Recomended.
8. E owners stop here, try to fit take off's now if to hard the carry on following instructions. Undo the bolts around the air box lid and lift it off.
9. Put a sheet of kitchen towel paper in each carb inlet. Because if you don’t something will fall in there.
10. Remove air filter.
If dirty wash in soapy water, rinse, shake dry and spray oil or WD40 on it, this will aid in the retention of dirt that’s in the air, to stick in the filter. Recomended.
11. Undue the round air inlet pipe clamps either side of the frame, if side panels removed.
12. Undue the two bolts that are above and between carb inlets 1&2 and 3&4, these bolts do not need to be removed completely.
13. Undo and remove the 3 bolts at the rear of the air box. Notiecing where loom hooks go.
14. Unclip and pull free the 2 pipes connected to the air box, 1 clear drainpipe at the rear, 1 grey crank case breather pipe top middle rear.
15. Remove air box.
Look at the air box inlets, and you will see two little holes in the bottom, if you don’t want your cylinder head cover to look crap and the possibility of water seeping down the spark plug holes, and trashing coils, block these off with silicon or similar. Recomended.
16. (16 to 23 only if no take offs fitted C's and F's and E's if your feed up swearing cos No 3 take offs been a bitch) Now with the 3 mm ball headed Allen key driver loosen the carb securing clips on the back of the carbs, easy with this tool. Loosen out the idle adjuster knob from above the small sprocket cover, and disconnect air feeder pipe to the secondary air system, and also the carb pressure air feed pipe. Both top middle front.
16a. If no mate to hold the carbs you will also have to disconnect the carb heating pipe at the filter bottle, and at the stop valve the other end of the carbs, this is black with a brass ring at one end.
17. Mentally note how carbs are positioned and seated. Wiggle and lift carb block free, and get mate to hold them, or if you did 16a swing the whole carb bank round the outside of the frame. Blank off inlet manifolds with kitchen paper.
18. You now have easy access to the two blanking bolts under the carbs of 2 and 3, remove these and fit Kawasaki carb take offs and washers with 8 mm deep socket.
19. While carbs are lifted free, locate the 3 carb adjusting screws and if there dirty wipe clean and paint white to make locating easier when carbs refitted. E owners look on the underside.
Its a good time to do a shim clearance check at this point as your almost there. Recomended.
20. Remove inlet manifold kitchen paper and refit carbs, noting that they are fitted the same as before removal, you should feel them Dunk or knock into place.
21. Retighten the 4 inlet clips with the 3mm Allen driver, and reconnect carb heater pipes if disconnected earlier.
It would be a good time to remove the coolent stop valve and put a linking pipe in, instead. Recomended.
22. Ok now is a good time to practice locating the 3 adjusting screws with the Philips driver, a small maglite torch is useful here. This next bit not for E's You can take off the secondary air feed to give more access to the adjuster between 2 & 3. It make's a lovely gurgling noise, but if to noisey put your thumb or tape over it.
23. Connect up the carb balancing pipes, No 1 is on the left if sat on the bike, connect in order so it makes it easy to see witch carb is doing what. You will need to pull off the pipes already connected to 1 and 4. These feed the secondary air inlet system. Hang the carb balancing kit where you can easy see and tap them.
24. Position the tank on the rear of the bike securely it may be worth cargo netting it, or on a table near the bike, ensure the fuel is at the tap end of the tank, and not all up the front of the tank.
25. Connect the clear pipe to the fuel pump pipe, and the other end to the tank tap. I squish the pipe to go into the pump pipe, and widen the other end with a bit of heat and push pliers in to open it up a bit so it will fit onto the fuel tap.
26. Refit fuel tap and turn on. A small amount of fuel will flow, but more will flow when the pump starts sucking it out the tank, so long as there’s fuel at the tap.
27. Remove the kitchen paper from the carbs. E owners go do 34 to 37, then come back here. Key in, and start the bike up as normal.
28. Before it gets to normal operating temperature rev the bike this will pump the air out of the filter bottle, now let it get up to normal operating temperature. While this is happening look at the carb balancing gauges and notice how uneven they are, they should be bobbing up and down a bit, if not then it could be sticking. This is something to watch out for.
29. Time to adjust, Try to adjust them for level at 2,000 rpm, when 1 & 2 are even by adjusting the screw you looked at between carbs 1 & 2, move on to 3 & 4 and do the same, when these are level move to the adjuster between 2 & 3, to bring all four into line. This may take some time as adjusting one pair most often upsets the other two. The more inline or equal the better. As you adjust try not to push down with the driver, as this will make the engine rev. After each adjustment rev the engine with the throttle and let it come back to settle, and recheck levels. If this process is taking a long time it maybe worthwhile shorting the fan out to run all the time.
30. It’s now even and running as smooth as silk, jobs a good en.
31. Put kitchen paper back in the carb inlets. Not E's unless you did not rebuild the air box. Time for a brew, let things cool off as messing around the hot engine now, may force you to use the swear box.
32. Disconnect gauges and reconnect the secondary air pipes to 1 & 4 carb take off points.
33. With a shorting pipe, link carb take off points 2 & 3 together, or the engine will run crap at low revs. Leaving the take off points on the bike makes it easier to do it again in 2,000 miles time, when it will need doing again. Well to keep it like running like silk.
34. Relocate the idle adjuster.
35. Check all pipes are connected round the secondary air system, and the carb air pressure feed pipe or the bike won’t go above 40 mph, refit the lower air box correctly, and the 2 pipes you disconnected from it. The clear drain pipe and the crankcase breather pipe.
36. Reconnect the air inlet pipes that go through the frame.
37. Refit air filter and remove kitchen paper from inlets and fit air box lid.
38. Give all that you've reconnected a look over to ensure alls ok, unplug the fuel pipe at the pump end and keep the pipe raised this will force the unused fuel back to the tank, blow into the pipe to get the last bit of the fuel back into tank and switch fuel tap to off. Disconnect tap. Refit tank to bike, reconnect fuel pipe and tap.
39. Refit seats.
40. Refit side fairings.
41. Take bike for thrash, and also feel how smooth it is low down in the 30mph zone.

[chunky]

or we could go round to YORKIE'S with some ov his fav beer & he might help us

[ebo9r]

Sounds spot on to me yorkie i have attached the pics for further help.
Was going to do the writing bit aswell but been a bit busy lately as me and Clare are off to France monday !! Anyway hope the pics help.

"23. Connect up the carb balancing pipes, No 1 is on the left if sat on the bike, connect in order so it makes it easy to see witch carb is doing what. You will need to pull off the pipes already connected to 1 and 4, these feed the secondary air inlet system. Hang the carbs where you can easy see and tap them."

Dont want to picky mate but should that be "Carb Balance's/gauges" ?
just having visions of people trying to hang carbs up

Were yorkie has refered to carbs 1,2,3,4 the pics are labeled "cyl1" etc but mean the same thing.

also Pic 2 the carbs have been lifted slightly for better photo.

i have removed the pics but if anyone would like them just PM me

[yorkie]

Helped Redcalibra do his F2 the other day so it was still fresh in my head.
Cheers ebo, now edited and I'm sure evryone will like your pics.
Cheers yorkie.

[chunky]

Yorkie & Ebo9r well done...you have both done a really good job there.

[wolfman62]

Yorkie, do you need to mention having the engine at a fast tick over? I did this when I did mine but only because that is what the haynes manual said to do.

[Gnarax]

So I'm the new guy here... But I've been thinking about the carbs on my F2 and I managed to track down this site and thread. Thanks for the great information about this, but I do have one rather simple question.

My bike, a silver '03 F2 is running pretty good with about 2,000 miles on it. I can't say that I have an immediate need to do this, but my gas mileage is low 30's and sometimes the throttle is a bit abrupt on the low end. This all leads me to my question.

Should I go ahead and sync the carbs as you have mentioned, or is this really not necessary on a relatively new bike. I bought a kit for my last bike, but it was a 10 year old bike and definately needed the work. This bike seems pretty smooth, and I'm leaving the stock exhaust on for a while, so jetting doesn't seem necessary - but maybe balancing and sync'ing the carbs is.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!
Mike

[wolfman62]

Will not do any damage and they may not need balancing once you have the balancers on. But you will not know unless you try. Would also be a good time to check your coolant filter as it will already be full of crap no doubt.

[Gnarax]

Originally Posted by wolfman62

Will not do any damage and they may not need balancing once you have the balancers on. But you will not know unless you try. Would also be a good time to check your coolant filter as it will already be full of crap no doubt.

Excellent! That's kinda what I thought. I just might get ambitious and do it anyway though.

Thanks!
Mike

[ebo9r]

i would do them mate if you have the time, i think they recommend doing them once a year but dont quote me on it, if you do i hope the guide is helpfull !

[Gnarax]

Originally Posted by ebo9r

i would do them mate if you have the time, i think they recommend doing them once a year but dont quote me on it, if you do i hope the guide is helpfull !

The guide rocks! I just found I'm going out of town for a week on business, but when I get back I think I'll give it a go. Anything else I should worry about - other than the coolant filter? Hmm... Maybe I'll start a new thread for this...

[ebo9r]

here is another giude for cleaning coolant filter although it is for a C model but iyours should be similar and its only a ten minute job

http://www.bikersoracle.com/zx9/foru...ead.php?t=2361

[redcalibra]

Top job Yorkie, good for me as you know the state of my mem ory.

[yorkie]

Did mine again today, took bloody ages, ran out of fuel to. only had about a litre left in the tank though.
Eventually got them all spot on at 2,000 rpm, but then held the revs at 5,000 rpm and 2 and 4 were sligtly higher so went back to 2,000 rpm and adjusted for differance. I now dont get any vibration when I'm doing 80 or 100 mph, and its so smooth riding in 30's. I'll just add that they wern't far out to start with and its been 4,000 miles since I last did them, saying that they wern't done as smooth as Ebo,s picture shows his, but they are now and its well worth the extra effort to make them so.
As a note don't hold the revs at 5,000 for to long as you will see the flashing red LED come on bit scary seeing that.

[yorkie]

Just got this e-mail from morgan carbtune, they dont use a zx9 but might be worth a read.

Hi

Recently you bought a Carbtune from us.

If you misplace the instructions we now have them online with more photographs in 5 langauges, English, French, German, Italian and Dutch at www.carbtune.com/inst.html so you can always print out a copy or read them online.