Had some rare time off this weekend so I pulled the VF up on the lift and started into it. Pics shortly but here's what I found: -for some reason the intake funnels were not seated properly in the carb throats, I was probably in a rush last spring to get it on the road. pulled the plenum off the carbs and I'm going to try and properly do this to clear up any possible leak points between the filter and the throats. -old boots, despite me soaking them in wintergreen and acetone (yep, stupid me) instead of wintergreen and alcohol, were still quite hard and were showing signs of cracking and very obviously were not fitting well on the head. new boots are MUCH better. -still not sure what the top-end ticking could be, valves were snugged up to 0.005" and it's still doing it so out of sheer fear of burning up a valve or two, going to set them a touch looser while I've got mostly every apart and opened up. motor only has around 18,000km on it and the chains were nice and tight so any ideas what else it could be? loose rocker arm, too much clearance between cam and holder? I'm out of ideas lol
inspect the bottoms of the adjusting screws. they were round when new but wear into flat spots which make setting and holding any adjustment problematical.
not sure how I missed this on round #1 but the air funnels are all too small a diameter to fit into the grooves on the carbs. is this by design and if so, what's the best way to have them installed in the plenum and then stretch them to fit/seal onto the carbs?
