I don`t get this thing...

Today I gathered my courage and what energy I had left from the weekend and went back to the garage to clean the carbs cause as expected the fuel additives had done little to none in respects of curing the power issue. A few days ago I bought a bottle of Kent ONE SHOT professional spray cleaner. The guy that sold it to me runs a service station and fetched a bottle from his own collection from the back room. Apparently that stuff is so strong it`s forbidden to be sold to consumers and is strictly restricted to professional use. The guy warned me to put crappy clothes on and get a fan blowing in the room to handle the fumes cause any spills will take any color from any clothes.

So to the garage I went, carrying this bottle of something only Gyro Gearloose could come up with, armed to the teeth with protective gear and the workshop manual to get the carbs out. And out they came, with fairly small effort even. I flipped the battery upside down, removed the bowl screws and one by one lifted the bowls off.

Nothing. Spotless. Squeaky clean. WTF? SInce they were open I still decided to spray the jets (which seemed to be number 135:s) and every other part liberally with the miracle-cleaner stuff. Replaced a few rounded screws and put them back to their place. The only thing I noticed was that the screws in the belts that secure the carb boots were oddly loose. Not like open but they came off with just a small turn of a screwdriver.

So while I was at it I decided to pull the plugs too. They were black and sooty, but not exactly dirty. I wasn`t exactly impressed from the sparks, purple and jumpy on all four, but when I tested one random plug I had lying around (new) it gave much weaker spark than the ones in the bike.

So I put everything together, beaten and sulking, wondering how much of my free time this thing is still going to want, fired her up, wondered about the improved throttle response, threw my lid on and took off.

HOLY ****** ******!!! The thing almost threw me off!!! I had no recollection about how much POWER a 600 bike has when it`s running properly! I had no idea what I did, other than some "light treatment" as we say here, but now it`s running better than ever!

 

I told you son!

Just out of curiosity, did you check your pilot screw settings, and more importantly, did you make sure not to get any of that cleaner on the rubber parts?

Maybe between some improved spark, and possibly getting some crud out of some of the jet passages, you've now got what you've got, which is some rip-roarin' once again!!

 

I let everything "as is" and didn't touch any of the settings cause I didn't know what to check. Since it has been running well with those settings I just tried not to upset them. I did try to be careful with the cleaner but basically the only way I could have made sure none of that stuff gets on the carb bowl seals would have been to pry them out for the treatment so I'm hoping I didn't cause damage to them...

 

Tried searching but didn`t find any help...

Lately I`ve been thinking about my bike`s rear end cause it feels awfully hard to me, today I finally remembered to check:



seems like my rear spring preload is almost maxed out! (shows really poorly but the setting is now something like 6 1/3)

What setting it should roughly be on, I weigh 80kg/176lbs.

Gotta go buy one of those special spanners next week, should the adjuster turn when the shock is on the bike or do I have to take the spring load off of it with some sort of spring press tools?

 

If you have the orignial toolkit, it will have the tool for adusting the preload - mine did, anyway.
To get it set right for you, you need to get some friends to help you get your front and rear sag set; you can do it alone, but it's not as easy.

You shouldn't need to rasie the rear, to alleviate the load, in order to adjust your preload.

 

I`m not planning to touch the front, it`s good IMO, but I could get the tail slightly softer, I don`t have the original toolkit but that spanner is available in any tool shop and there`s three in Lahti where I go to work, just need to measure what size I need.

So there`s no chart to convert my weight to preload setting then? Think I`ll just have to shoot from the hip and drop the preload for let`s say in steps of 0,5 and see what it does...

 

Cheap I know but I used a craftsman oil filter pliers to turn mine. Worked just fine. I of course don't have the tool kit either.

 

I think you're miss understanding how the preload adjuster works. The photo you showed is from above the rear shock but to read the setting you need to look directly from either side.

There is a raised stub on each side of the shock, fixed in place. The adjustment collar rotates the notched teeth onto the stub. The stub is either in one of the notches or it isn't, there's no fractions involved.

There's seven notches, seven being the most preload. Judging from your picture, you are set at 3. Hope that helps with your set up.

 

Ah, I thought the "gap" in the lower collar was the indicator, seemed a bit odd to me too... Hmm, so it's not tightened that much after all then, probably will be toying with it anyway just to see what it does cause the tail does feel a little stiff and high to me... Hopefully the shock's not busted cause a new one is ridiculously expensive however it does work so I think turning the adjuster a bit should give me what I want... I can always turn it back if it goes worse.

 

There's a number of cheap F2 rear shocks on Ebay if it comes to that but I imagine your shock is fine.

Definitely play around with the preload. JNS already mentioned it but have you sat on the bike and had someone measure the sag for you? Just for the experience, I would suggest turning the preload to 1 and riding around for a bit. Then turn it to 7 and ride the same roads. That would give you an idea of the two extremes so you know how they feel to you.

If you haven't made any adjustments yet, the collar can require a bit of force to turn. The spring is pressing down on it quite hard so you need decent leverage on the collar.