Several years ago a customer sent me some vintage Honda carbs from Australia. I rebuilt them. He got them back, and a month or so later, due to his complaint, I paid for him to return them to me. Going over them carefully, I found nothing wrong with them. I then paid to ship them back to him. Subsequently, after almost a year of trying to help him, taking time from other work, to help him diagnose his issue--in the end, the very end, he finally admitted to me, after nearly a year, that each time when I brought up the subject of ignition timing--and you can believe I did bring it up a few times over the course of that year--he had not been truthful when he said he had "checked" the ignition timing. In the end he admitted he had no idea how to adjust and service his ignition timing and another mechanic on his end had finally made the bike run right by servicing and adjusting the ignition. Well, at least he eventually told me.

I have more or less stopped rebuilding carburetors for Honda models whose ignitions are contact point based. The problem isn't the bikes, it's the owners who have no idea what it takes to tune them. The carburetors are only a piece of it, and not the most important one. Folks unfamiliar with point ignition have no frame of reference with which to comprehend the vital importance and serious implications of neglecting their ignition systems. Kettering ignition timing is an art, and though not difficult for an experienced person, the process is unintuitive. There is real frustration waiting there. What's worse, vintage customers go "deer in the headlights" when you try to educate them. They don't have a clue and they don't want to, and it is virtually a guarantee I'll hear back from them that the "carbs aren't working right".

Most riders overthink carburetors. They stick out there, are easy to see, relatively easy to mess with, remove, modify, and sadly, screw up. And now a handful of generations later, they get the blame for whatever ails the engine, rightly or wrongly, while systems equally needful of attention are neglected.

Part 18