Re: Motorcycle un-recovery... sort of...

In message <C28E128596683801A@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, Chris Suslowicz
<chris+news@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes

Oh Ghod...

The grapefruit's Austin All-aggro and its "interesting" performance
problem. Sudden loss of power for no explicable reason. You'd be
cheerfully doing 70 MPH down the motorway and /gradually/ start
slowing down for no apparent reason, even with the pedal flat to
the floor. This was approaching brown trouser time, as you had
around 30 seconds of forward motion remaining before the engine
stopped altogether, and the hard shoulder was *essential*.

The bloody thing would then refuse to restart for about 10 minutes,
then behave as if nothing had happened. I suspected the fuel
system,

Close. Carb icing -- it's not just an aero engine problem. A
combination of cold wet air and adiabatic cooling courtesy of the
Venturi effect deposits ice on the inside of the downtube until it
chokes up, resulting in loss of power and eventual failure. Leave it to
sit for ten minutes in close proximity to a hot engine and the ice
melts, solving the problem until the next time.

It usually happens when you're giving it some right wrist in cold damp
conditions like a typical British summer. A properly set-up air intake
with the pre-heater tube in place helps as does an air filter worthy of
the name. On one of the vans I owned years ago that suffered from the
same problem, I mounted a couple of 10 ohm 25W wirewound resistors on
the top of the carb body to act as carb heaters and melt the ice. It
worked, but I forgot to switch it off a couple of times when parked up
and flattened the battery thereby. Swings and roundabouts.
--
To reply, my gmail address is nojay1 Robert Sneddon
.

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