carb icing?
 

No not the fondant kind :p

In the past couple of weeks, my daily bike commute has been a pain in the **** on the way to work in the mornings. My bike lives outside unfortunately, and my commute is 4 miles through town. most mornings in the past few weeks its been dry, but cool and damp and the bike wants to cut out at most junctions, with or without choke, open up the throttle and its fine.

On the way home in the afternoon, or my evening ride out, the bike runs fine. Tickover is fine too, so its not too low.

I started commuting agin at the begining of march, and it was cold but not damp, the bike didnt cut out, so I know its not my tickover or the way I use the choke.

Could the bike be suffering carb icing, as if it was ht lead or similar, the bike would have the problem in the evening.

Any ideas, anyone else suffering this sort of problem?

Lee

Re: carb icing??
 

Take it you have the earlier version with carbs. If so could easily be carb icing. Does it normaly show up just above frezzing, normally about 2celcius? Could try some Silkolene PRO FST in your fuel good things about it, but never tried it myself

Re: carb icing??
 

PRO FST does help, as does using shell V-power or similar high-ocane fuels, they have more additives in (although the fst is probably now the cheaper option) - about 200 ml per full tank of petrol should see you right (its mostly isopropanol, or if you like IUPAC naming, propan-2-ol).

You may like to get your carb's balanced, this can help with the problem of carb icing, although it won;t cure it completly. I had lots of problems this winter - the bikew was ok being used around town, but long stints at constant throttle on motorways saw carb icing creep in.

What sort of riding do you do? I always found that carb icing was worse in the first 10 minutes of riding, then when everything was properly warmed up, the engine performed fine

Re: carb icing??
 

is your charging system working properly, i thought I was suffering from carb icing a while ago and it turned out to be a faulty charging system not supplying enough 'juice' to the battery