carb heaters
 

hi all.
well where to start. she is running like a bag of s**t at the moment. start her up cold morning comes on the choke runs ok get 3 miles into 5 mile jurney will not idle, have to keep revs up to 6k to be able to run. buy the time i am at work 5 miles it seems to be ok and will idle. when i leave for home in the afternoon she is fine except idle speed is slightly eratic. i dont know if it is carb icing, crap fuel, something wrong in carbs or what.
any help please?
she is becoming unuseable at tho mo.
cheers

Carb icing is a good possibility, some people have found that Shell Optimax improves things somewhat, another alternative is too use a fuel additive, but that can be expensive.

Also considering the weather recently, there is fair a chance that there is water in the carbs.

thanks for that.
no shell garage in sunny plymouth though.
whats the best way to get rid of water if any?
thanks

Drain the carbs and tank.

TBH it doesn't sound like water in the fuel. I have had that and the symptoms you are describing doesn't sound like water contamination. With this the power delivery will be fluffy all the time as water gets sucked through the carbs. Sounds very much like wet front plug, degrading HT leads, carb icing to me. Could be wrong, but that would be where my money is.

is the choke cable sticking ? could be staying open and adding to the problem, I was having similar symptons, carbed were cleaned and sync'd and choke cable changed, now fine

Yup, same as Ian...

if it is carb icing i can say in my limited experiance of 1 complete tank of optimax ( very recently) it didn't cure anything but then i am on a thundercat and it was -10 :shock: I prefer the Silkoline PRO-FST. It seemed to fix most of my problems! and KeithD, Grinch, Lee, leave it alone, no comments please.

thanks to you all for the reply. it gives me something to look at. just a point not too cold today and she went like a dream all day.

cheers
again

Nige

update.
looked at the bike today, found the thermo switch trapped between the wiring loom and the cooling system topup point, tested it out and it is working fine, switched ignition on and left her a while and the carb heater point of the carbs warmed up.
so was it the position of the switch causing the fault due to the cooling system point getting warm as the bike warmed up there for shuting off the heaters. will need to wait for the next cold snap.
thanks for all the advice