Being back at sea-level I'm going to get my bike re-jetted since it was set up for the Rocky Mountains. I spoke to a shop in the city and they said "well it won't be cheap... probably around 500 bucks."

Then I spoke to a shop about 50 miles south where I'm staying at the moment and they said "It'll be about 150 bucks."

So what gives? Is the one place super over-priced or is the other super under-priced? I don't mind a good deal but I'm almost suspect of the cheaper place with worry that they'll be doing a quickie job or something.

Jets only? About 10 dollars and you can do the job in under 20 minutes yourself. Rotate the carburetor top toward the drive belt, remove four bowl screws. See the big brass thing with a hole in the middle? Change it out. See the tiny one in a hole? Change it out. Ignore the float. Ignore the white spacer mod.

Take the jets in it to Harley Davidson, tell them to go up 2 sizes if you were in Denver or similar altitude. Done. Mikuni BS40 was a hop up kit carburetor for Evo Sportsters in the 1980s, any independent shop should have a jet box.

Yeah, if you don't kind sitting on the ground while swapping the jets. My set I just swapped out had been in there for several years, figured I'd end up using vise grips on the bowl screws and an e-z out on the jets. So I pulled the carb off this time. Bowl screws and the perfectly clean after sitting for just shy of 3 calendar years jets were out in under 2 minutes. Took me almost 10 minutes to wrestle the carb off of the engine.  

WD wrote on 10/10/13 at 06:25:32:


I think I end up sitting on ground longer when wrestling the carb out than it would take to swap out the jets in the rotated position. Thanks for the insight!

My own personal experience with jet changes is......throwing in a couple of jets doesn't take long...on the second time.  The first encounter you will be cleaning the carb, finding out what jets are in it, getting out the stubborn screws in the slide that hold the white spacer in, drilling out the brass plug that covers the idle mixture screw, installing a new fuel hose to replace the old cracked one, going to the hardware store to find the allen screws to replace the stock phillips ones....etc.

If you want to just replace the existing jets in hopes of making a better running bike.......that might/could work adn you might get a bike that runs better by installing jets that have been working in other peoples bikes.....that is what companies like DynaJet do.  My own epxerience is that it took testing of about 5 different combinations to eliminate the off idle flat spot that my bike had.....and to get the "correct" jetting for my owner personal bike dialed in.  The main and pilot jet changes could be down pretty quickly after I had installed the allen screws in the float bowl.  But my jetting changes invovled changing the white spacer to 3 washers....and later to 2 washers.......and working on the slide needle is time consuming.  I would guess that with the original cleaning, jet changes, test rides, more changes...etc.  My "jetting" process took about 8 hours to get the bike running the way I wanted it to run.  This 8 hours was spread out over a couple of weeks and many evening test rides.....so it would be nearly impossible to do this on a bike that I did not own.....or someone wasn't willing to leave with you for a few weeks.  I also had the advantage of having an O2 sensor and gauge installed at the time so that I could see exactly what was happening when I changed jets.....and I never had to guess what was happening.

Thank goodness I don't have to try and make a living jetting other peoples bikes.....I would starve to death if I only got $ 150 to do it.

Dave

WD wrote on 10/11/13 at 05:48:26:



Ahhh, yes; the jilted lover syndrome.  

I have a neighbor with an early model Honda Gold Wing that got tired of keeping 4 carbs in synch.  He is a touring guy and not so much into stop light races.  He built a new steel manifold with a line attached to it that runs the warm engine coolant through to prevent iciing.....and he runs a single VW Beetle Solex carb on it.  Much simpler....and he added the adjustable main jet so both the idle and main mixure are adjustable by hand without even a screwdriver needed.

WD wrote on 10/11/13 at 07:44:16:



Solder up the jet and drill it out to the size you need, hey presto- one downdraft on a savage!