Tps and balancing

[mznyc]

 I think my biggest worry at this point, is setting up the valve lash correctly....

I've always tinkered with my bikes when I stored them in the city,but now that I moved them out of town I do ALL of my own work.I did the valves for the first time a few years ago and they are stupid easy when you've done it once.(I also have a Desmoquattro ST4s,so compared to those it's child's play).No special tools needed other than feeler gauges.Can be done in 15-20 mins.This MUST be done before trying to adjust fueling,if you don't know when they were done last,...or ever!

[chamberlin]

Hey thanks for the vote of confidence! I've just got confirmation that my TPS breakout harness shipped, so valves are first on the list for this weekend! I don't think this bike has ever been tuned since new, other than new plugs and wires. Like you, I am always striving to get to the point where I can tackle any issue that comes up in my own garage. Being able to do valves will be a good step in that direction, and I'm guessing it's rite of passage for every Guzzi owner!

[JBBenson]

My bike wasn't running right even though my carb sync tool said it was synced. I could feel it was out of balance.

 

So, I made something like this:

 

http://www.powerchutes.com/manometer.asp

 

I used 2 stroke oil in the event something got sucked in. I filled it up to the 18-20" mark, if 36" is at the bottom.

 

The thick oil gives any change in balance a little lag time, so move the white knob, wait a bit, blip the throttles a bit, wait until the oil settles. If needed, adjust again. Don't forget to close the bleed screws.

 

So simple, but works really great.

[chamberlin]

Valves have been adjusted! It really wasn't that bad, just had to try to predict how much change would occur during tightening of the locknut. Once that was figured out, it was easy to get the lash to acceptable numbers.

 

Got my TPS set to 150mV full closed, and 521mV at idle. I have the air bleeds at about 1.75 turns out at the moment. For now, I adjusted the balancer knob by guessing and feeling the motor smooth out a little. I am getting a new exhaust soon, so I didn't want to do a full vacuum balance check until the new exhaust is installed. When the time comes, I will close both air bleeds and use this electronic differential pressure gauge (which my company makes). I am not sure if it will be able to buffer out the pulses like a nice column of Mercury would, but I will give it a go since I have access to this $800 gauge.

 

[Kiwi_Roy]

Deleted

 

Hey - what's that front wheel peeking in there?

Looks interesting.

[chamberlin]

Hello Roy, that bike peeking in is a 1972 BMW R60/5 - I was going to take it on as a restoration project, but I decided to stay 100% with Italian girls. I am in the process of buying back my '03 Aprilia Tuono.

 

BTW, that particular DP gauge is definitely not made for this sort of application, but what the heck! A vacuum bias on the left port will show a negative value, and higher vacuum on the right port will show as positive. If everything's balanced, it will show zero.

 

Also, I wanted to thank you for the comments about the right hand idle adjustment screw... I was scratching my head wondering why the heck it is needed, if we are setting the idle mV using the left hand set screw... now it makes sense. Funny though, I ended up adjusting it so it just barely touched without affecting the idle voltage value. Just like you said to do. I used my thinnest feeler gauge instead of paper to verify.