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Bouyancy, schmouyancy?!?!?!?!
Why, that's what it's all about.
Now if you're talking plastic floats, Ya they do change over time.
I was thinking of the brass ones, mine are brass, floats i mean:whistle: .
I do agree, the wet method would take out any of the uncertainties and definitivly allows you to set all 4 carbs the same.

The drain bolts on the carbs are 6mm with a .75 mm thread pitch. You can go to a farm supply or hardware store and buy 5-6 mm clear fuel line for say, a buck or two, for a few feet. Way more than enough. The stuff I have fits fairly snuggly just by pushing it into the drain bolt hole. If I have any concerns about it being tighter I'll wrap a touch of that white teflon plumbers tape on it and thread it in, or some such. Simple is good and I don't see why we have to be fancy or complicate something like this. Costs nothing, simple to set up. I'm pretty much ready to adjust my fuel service level, for $2.00

Post edited by: gas, at: 2006/02/27 02:08

You can check it dry to get is somewhat close. However most of the floats have had some part of the float dinged, or bent sometime in the last 20 + yrs. Therefore while you may be close, you will be able to get is much closer by checking it wet. You can check it wet with the carbs on the bike in most cases. If they are right then you do not have to take the carbs off. If they are wrong than take them off, put them in a vice (level all the way around) and pull the bowl off and set the float and recheck while in the vice(yes you need to set up a temp fuel source). It is not as big a pain as you might think it is. A couple of mm will make a difference.

BRGMGBGT said...

I was thinking of the brass ones, mine are brass, floats i mean

How do you get your brass floats, to float in a bowl of gas?
Last time I checked brass sinks, not floats.

Floats can be made out of brass, composition and plastic. The more modern carbs tend towards plastic. The brass floats are used on a variety of models and are basically hollow with thin brass shells. YES, it is brass and they solder the two floats to a brass cross piece. Look at the floats on a VM29 smoothbore for an example of a brass float.

JMK - Your explanation was pretty much spot on but I disagree on one minor point. The composition floats used in VM carbs do NOT deteriorate from age causing them to "sink" or change their bouyancy characteristic in any way. The problem with using the dry float level method is that the floats HAVE been in the carburetors for years and have been adjusted; probably many times. It says in the manual to remove the floats when adjusting them and to bend the tangs. Most folks DO NOT do this... they just pull the floats down to achieve less gas in the bowl or use some pliers to hold the brass connector and bend the floats UP to get more gas in the bowl. Bend these things a zillion times and the float height thing becomes kind of problematic.

I would much prefer to do the float level thing but in my business, I have found through trial and error that it is mainly a waste of time. The level of gas, if checked by the dynamic wet method will show major discrepencies using the two methods. I also believe that the wet method is the only reliable one unless you have four new floats. The only exception on VM carbs is on the EARLY Z1/Z1A floats. These have much heavier metal connectors (not brass) and are typically not bent up or down and the float level (dry/upsidedown) thing works pretty well. The 17mm bowl drains make it difficult to check wet anyway. Conversely, it is difficult to check the Keihin CV float settings dry because of the way the floats are constructed.