My first motorcycle was given to me by a friend of my brother who knew I just wanted to ride and, at the same time, knew I didn’t have the means to buy anything rideable. It came with some stipulations: there wasn’t a key, and it didn’t run. It was given to him by someone else, and the best part was that it actually had a service manual and a title.
The bike was a 1984 Kawasaki KZ440 LTD. The issue was, rust in the gas tank had clogged the carb, and then it sat for years with the fuel in it. I had never attempted to rebuild a carburetor and had only heard horror stories. With my basic set of tools and the bike stored at my then-girlfriend’s house, I took the carbs off and figured, how hard could the repair be? I took everything apart, cleaned it all, or so I thought, put it back together, and it didn’t work. So then I took the carbs to a shop, and they warned me they couldn’t get them fully adjusted, but they were running. So I installed them back and found out I had to block off some of the intake, and it ran like a dream. Well, until you sat at idle, because then gas would leak out of the overflow onto the exhaust. I didn’t care, and I rode that bike for two years until the electric starter went out, and I worked on it continuously. Finally, I was able to purchase a fuel-injected bike and swore off carbs. Well, I was wrong. I now attempt to bring old equipment back to life for fun.
Well, last night, in between delivering the kids to Young Life and troubleshooting a car, I also had a carb off my dad’s John Deere 322 with electric choke. The tractor wasn’t running, he needed to get his garden tilled, and this tractor was the only way to do that. He brought me just the carb, and with this being a single-carb 3-cylinder motor, it is pretty simple. Having access to a friend with an ultrasonic cleaner makes it even easier. I opened the carb up and left the two halves fully assembled, then into an ultrasonic cleaner that was filled with piping-hot water and dish soap. No harsh cleaners; from shared experience of others, I have found that good old dish soap and hot water are all that is needed most of the time to clean these parts up.
After about 45 minutes in the cleaner, I took it out and checked all the jets with a light and a carb brush. Everything looked clean, I went and picked up some new bolts to hold the halves together, and sent them back home with my dad. He called me the next day and gave me the good news that the tractor ran better than it ever has.
The entire process made me realize that a carburetor is not far off from a couple of EXAIR products that we offer for refurbishment. Some of the products that we frequently refurbish for some customers are the EXAIR Air Knives and the Reversible Drum Vacs. These refurbishments are often the result of the environment and a failure in the filtration of the compressed air. The best part is that we will evaluate the products for free, determine if they can be repaired or refurbished, and then provide a quote for the process all within a few days of the item getting here. We also offer free videos of how to do things like clean the RDV for free through this blog.
Take this Super Air Amplifier, for instance. The system came in for the issue of underperformance, and we had already discussed with the customer how their filtration had failed about a year ago. They wanted to see what could bring this unit back to life. As soon as we saw pictures of it, we knew that the plenum was clogged up with debris.
If you have any EXAIR product that you think is not performing at an optimal level, please contact an Application Engineer today. If the product cannot be refurbished or repaired, we will give you a replacement option as well. The best part is, stock products ship the same day on orders received by 2 PM ET.
1 – Kris Krug – Camera phone / my first motorcycle – retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kawasaki_Z440_LTD.jpg, 8/17/2005
