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PHM40 mysteries and magic

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rusty rotor:
Mysterious to me anyway.

Context: '78 LMI, big bore, big valves, ported, polished, Dyna, dual plugs, etc. A Hecht beast.

Everything fresh by a Gooz resto pro. New Dyna, coils, cables, wires, plugs, hoses, petcocks, you name it. Full carb rebuild, or so I'm told, this guy has some very weird ideas about how to refresh a bike.

Had issues with carburetion when the bike was first delivered. Oh and it was dumping fuel out of the carbs. Back it goes, the old-style floats got filed or dremeled or something, as they were 'swollen' and sticking.
Then another round of carb tuning.

Get the bike back and everything is 'pretty good', until I finally get it on the freeway and discover rough running on steady throttle at 70mph-ish, also and especially when you whack the throttle.

Now the bike seems to fairly quickly detuning itself. Starting to run rougher, and bogging pretty strongly when you smack open the slides. Smooth and gentle inputs all the time result in 99.9% smooth running. What fun is that!
Right pipe a little smoky, right tip a little sooty, left side clean.

Weirdly, this bogging on acceleration seems to be intermittent. I can't reproduce it every time.

And just to add a pinch of fun, as I do this I hear some knock from the left cylinder only. But this bike has always done this. Huh?

Start with the low end needle? Are these screws inclined to move by themselves? I twiddled em, carefully putting them back where they were, and I notice one moves very freely and the other has some resistance.

guzzisteve:
Have you re-torqued the heads & reset valves since getting it back? Might be time. If you have the chromemoly pushrods it is .002" in & ex. Screws don't move on their own. There is an accelerator pump jet, make sure it's a #38 and squirts across the room.

rusty rotor:
Have not, it's been under 500mi. I (ahem) expect that was all done, but am finding my mileage to vary if you know what I mean.

Sorry to bother, anyone have the sheet with the torques?

Antietam Classic Cycle:

--- Quote from: rusty rotor on September 13, 2021, 12:50:10 PM ---Mysterious to me anyway.

Context: '78 LMI, big bore, big valves, ported, polished, Dyna, dual plugs, etc. A Hecht beast.

Everything fresh by a Gooz resto pro. New Dyna, coils, cables, wires, plugs, hoses, petcocks, you name it. Full carb rebuild, or so I'm told, this guy has some very weird ideas about how to refresh a bike.

Had issues with carburetion when the bike was first delivered. Oh and it was dumping fuel out of the carbs. Back it goes, the old-style floats got filed or dremeled or something, as they were 'swollen' and sticking.
Then another round of carb tuning.

Get the bike back and everything is 'pretty good', until I finally get it on the freeway and discover rough running on steady throttle at 70mph-ish, also and especially when you whack the throttle.

Now the bike seems to fairly quickly detuning itself. Starting to run rougher, and bogging pretty strongly when you smack open the slides. Smooth and gentle inputs all the time result in 99.9% smooth running. What fun is that!
Right pipe a little smoky, right tip a little sooty, left side clean.

Weirdly, this bogging on acceleration seems to be intermittent. I can't reproduce it every time.

And just to add a pinch of fun, as I do this I hear some knock from the left cylinder only. But this bike has always done this. Huh?

Start with the low end needle? Are these screws inclined to move by themselves? I twiddled em, carefully putting them back where they were, and I notice one moves very freely and the other has some resistance.

--- End quote ---

Why don't you just come right out and say who worked on it Jose/Jerry?

I'll "out myself": I worked on this Le Mans for him, the first time was in January and I had a one-day, 50 degree, window where I could test ride it, put 40 trouble-free miles on it. Delivered it to him, he rode it around his neigborhood, all seemed well. But as warmer weather arrived, he was complaining about the bogging issue, so he bought it back here. Floats (replacement white ones) had expanded and were dragging on the carb body. I trimmed them slightly so that they moved freely (since no better replacements are available), went down one size on the idle jets, test rode it 150 miles over the next several days, in every type of environment (backroads, town, interstate, etc.) and all was well. No "bogging".

Whenever a bike I've never worked on before comes into the shop, I do "everything": head retorque, valve adjustment (to Manfred's specs. in this case), check tightness of every fastener on the bike - all in addition to the repairs or modifications asked for by the customer. I corrected a lot of issues on this Le Mans.

There was no "knock" at any time when the bike was here, and it not being present, I could have never said it had always done it.

rusty rotor:
Well, it's very simple. The forum rules are clear, and my exactingly factual observations about the results of your work could be construed to be in violation of those rules.

Plus this is your livelihood. To me this all seems to be an awfully small thing to mess with a guy's, an individual uniquely skilled craftsman's, livelihood. What you do, is you don't do business with that person again.
You, or at least I, don't flame that craftsman or as you say "out" him.

I will say this:

The electrics that you redid from stem to stern seem impeccable and they are in fact awesome. All the hoses cables controls etc, ditto.

After that, things become less rosy, (cough, braking, cough) and in point of fact, the bike is quickly losing tune, and was never tip top.

And yeah, this bike has always, as in before, long before Antietam, demonstrated some knock on the left side.

As I say, mysterious to me. Maybe Manfred had a twitch in his wrist.

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