Tiger Purring (or carbs vs. valves)

[RiderX]

Well, I finally gave up and took the bike into the dealer for repairs on Thursday. I should start by saying that I bought my '98 steamer in Phoenix last July and rode it back to Boise, Idaho. The previous owner told me that it had the 24k service done less than 2k miles ago. I had a blast on the trip back and had no troubles on various trips to Sun Valley, Lewiston and even out to Canby, Oregon in the rain, besides my daily 12 mile each way commute to work.

I had troubles all winter long with cold starting, or rather not starting. It began to be a problem when the garage temp dropped below 40 degrees and got progressively worse until it wouldn't start below 50. The odd thing was that it would sometimes start. Other times it would need to be left on the battery tender all night, or jumped straight from a running car. We tried monkeying with the idle/air mixture screws and that seemed to help some, but it still had problems. It seemed that with all my efforts I couldn't find what would fix it and it was getting progressively worse.

I've posted here before on my efforts to fix it, and besides the idle/air adjustment I tried spark plugs, plug wires, a new battery - twice, carb adjustments, seafoam, a heat gun on several components to try to locate the point of failure and nothing was getting me anywhere. A couple of folks here were convinced that my problem was either carb jetting or valve adjustments. To be honest, I am no mechanical wiz and the thought of tearing into either the carbs or the cylinders was just a bit too daunting. I was hoping a couple of buddies of mine would have the time to lend a hand, but it just never seemed to work out.

Since it was getting progressively worse and the cold weather is nearly over (we still are getting mornings in the 30s) I decided to bite the bullet and take her into the BMW/Triumph dealer. It took me two weeks to get an appointment as it is what with all the biker trash coming out of the woodwork with the sunshine and warm days . I dropped it off on Thursday and they had called me later that day to say they hadn't had any luck in isolating it. They called back Friday morning to say they had run a compression test and the 3 cyls were 105, 75 and 25 pounds. Yeeeuck! The question was what was causing the difference.

One of my riding buddies and I were a bit concerned that it was burned valves and would need a valve job at the worst. It turned out to be that the valves had been over-tightened to the point they were losing compression. They said someone had monkeyed with the carbs as well and put the wrong jets in them. They put in the correct jets and did the valve adjustment. The adjustment was supposed to be done at the 24k mile service the previous owner had done. Either the shop that did the work didn't, or they really botched the job. In any case it is fixed now and is like riding a new bike. I really thought it ran ok before but it simply hums now. More power and a nice steady idle. Besides the carbs and valves they found and fixed a gas tank leak (I thought the carbs were leaking) at one of the panel connecting points. They also fixed the horn which hadn't worked since I bought it. Seems a piece was missing in the horn switch assembly. The bad news is the repairs were 570 bucks. The good news is she purrs now like a brand-new kitty and I look forward to some glorious riding weather! Final verdict: carb jets AND valve adjustments.

[fano]

 Good job. I had the same problem last summer and the valve adjustments solved it for me too.

[CBAT]

Glad to read a report about good dealer repair service. We hear all the horror stories but I know there are good mechanics out there. Enjoy the ride!

[RiderX]

oh, and I forgot to mention that I went out this morning and she fired up without even needing the choke. Woohoooo!!!

[Mudhen]

Well worth the money for the result (easy for me to say, right?).  And probably what you would have spent for the 24k service, anyway.  Think if you had a BMW you could spend almost that every 6k miles...

Thanks a lot for taking the time to post the solution - this will be a great resource for people to look back on.

Pat

[nightrunner]

Yeah, congrats on getting all this sorted.