TOPIC:

Hi sixpipes.

kawboy and kza13 made excellent, logical suggestions. Their comments are easy to confirm.

1st: Need to see pictures of your "carb cleaning pump". Homemade devices and tools like these are of great interest to me and I'm certain, many others as well ! Don't be shy

SO ! If after confirming the suggested issues are correct or have been corrected and you're still having flooding problems then you need to weigh your floats on a "pocket" set of digital scales. The first weigh-in will be "wet". It's important that they've been in fuel for 2-3 days and this is easily done by putting them in a small container of fuel. You can dry them off with a paper towel immediately before placing them on the scale. Weigh all three and record the weights. Then let them dry-out for 4 to 5 days and weigh them again. If your "wet" to "dry" difference is more then 1.0 gram, your floats are likely the problem.

Since we're on the topic of checking /setting floats I'd like to throw out a comment for consideration.

If a float has been designed properly, when a float is floating in the carb bowl at the desired level, the float arm SHOULD be parallel to the float bowl mounting face of the carb body and the tang which operates the needle SHOULD be parallel to the float arm and also 90 degrees to the needle. The point I'm trying to make here is that when the needle has been raised by the tang to the closed position of the needle the force of the tang is applied directly upward and not putting a side load on the needle. A lot of "mechanics bend the tang up or down to achieve the desired float height and inadvertently set the tang at an angle to the needle and this may cause the needle to bind in the needle seat and not close fully. When you need to raise or lower the float height you should be raising or lowering the tang parallel to the float arm and not just bending the tang up or down.
The 3 carbs I just rebuilt had the tangs all misshapen and had to be reworked because somebody (previous owner) made adjustments without knowing how to do it properly. As an auto mechanic I rebuilt 100's of Carter carbs which had nitrile seat on the needles. We used to inspect the needle nitrile seat to see how distorted the nitrile would get and quite often the impression on the seat would be at an angle to the seat which meant the float tang was pushing the needle up at an angle and had it not been for the nitrile seat, the carb would have flooded. Holley carbs had needle similar to the ones in our bikes with a steel needle seating on a brass seat and one of the biggest problems we had with the Holleys was getting the carbs to stop flooding after a rebuild.

I fully expect to see some rebuttals here, so go ahead and chime in I've got my helmet on !!!

Just had another thought(the older I get the slower they come) Sixpipes suggested that he had to open the air bleeds 5 turns. That suggests to me that the throttle butterflies are not set properly. I believe that they are supposed to be position idle set1-1/2 turns open from fully closed. I think right now you've got the air supply coming full bore through the idle circuit when in fact the idle circuit should be for augmenting mixture control (fine tuning)

Scotch??? Am I on the straight and narrow here???

kawboy - regarding the angular relationship between the needle and the tang: You are correct. That was one of the many challenges in designing the brass floats.

Re: "the 5 turns". I thought the very same thing. 5 turns There's not a lot of needle thread left to hold them in and ya, the throttle-plates are outta whack

What size idle jets came with the "rebuild kit" you referred to? A voice in my head is thinking they are too large. The fact that you've got all 6 idle-air screws turned out to 5 turns is no coincidence; and we have to start somewhere !

I copied the pump from another members thread, it is not as good but it still works - I used a syringe as the pump.
I checked the butterflies and found that they were not completely closing - I tightened up each butterfly as I went along, this was a mistake as if I just pinched the screw up on both for each carb and open and closed a few times the butterfly centred itself and now they are closed much better. I can however still see some light if I shine a torch through the carb, not a huge amount but still enough to let air through.
I will have to check the jet sizes.
I have stripped the carbs again and found two other problems.

1/ I used instant gasket to seal the air box, this was supposed to be oil and petrol resistant - it is not has I found that it dissolves in petrol and gets pulled into the carb. Had the float closed off the petrol supply this might not have happened but I thought for warned is for armed for other members.

2/ The carbs were perfectly clean after the recent strip down but when I stripped it today I found the jets in the pictures totally blocked, I used new rebuild kits but this looks like it has been there months ?

I am trying to figure a way to get a fuel filter in line but I struggle to see where one could be fitted - any clues would be appreciated.