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      Assistance with your                             Carburetor / FC Tuning

         First, a quick "universal" note; 

Also the info below is probably about 10% of what we could put here, but rather than being overwhelming, this is just some quick info for those of you that aren't professional "tuners" but want to do some tuning yourself as best you can. Its just some simple guidelines for basic tuning.

    If anyone, any where, from any company just outright tells you, what your carb(s) on your machine needs, without knowing or asking you many details first, beware!!!

What do I mean by that?

Almost any Mod you do to your engine, especially any major one, will effect fuel/air requirements. Some, not enough to require any fuel/air changes, but many will require an adjustment to keep things tuned "spot-on". Your elevation, your climate, your weather patterns, type of riding/racing, & etc. all play a part in determining what the best jet/settings are for your carb(s) or fuel injection maps will be! Yes, you can be recommended a jet size or map, as a good starting point, if all is "stock" on your Bike, Snowmobile, ATV, Car/Tk, etc etc, fuel injection or carburetion, but this is only a starting point. Elevation and climate are the probably the two other most non-direct major factors effecting air/fuel requirements. 

For instance, with carbs, if they are completely stock, & you know your OEM jet sizes, & other internal settings, that is always a good place to start. Trying to tune on something that some "expert" tuner has already completely altered, can just lead to untold headaches later. 

When someone asks us, "what do you recommend for jetting" we, like any fuel/air professionals, must know are criteria before giving a legitimate answer! We also need to know what is in your carb(s) & how it is running at the currant time. Without know these things, its like calling the doctor & saying "I don't feel good, whats wrong & what do you recommend". If he or she, didn't know you or your history, or ask you specifically what you meant by, "I don't feel good", & simply proceeded to recommend a specific treatment, wouldn't you consider them to have very little knowledge, and not trust anything they said? Of course their answer wouldn't be professional or intelligent!! Yet, there are people working in this industry that will rattle of an answer, just to try & impress you with their "knowledge", then when their "recommendation" doesn't work, they either have an excuse, or don't have time to talk to you anymore!!, sound familiar? 

So, where do you start?

You first need to know where you stand at the moment with your fuel mixture. If you don't know, you need to go a jet size or so richer, see how your engine runs, take some notes, mentally or on paper. Then, go a jet size or so leaner than where you started, & take notes. Now, you have something to base everything else you do on. Now you can keep going whichever direction was better. Once you go past where you should be, your power will start to fall off, then you simply back up to where it was best, quite simple! If you do not do this, you will always be taking shots in the dark with your tuning, & will never know how the power of a well tuned engine feels, or the satisfaction of making it run that way! 

One problem with this however, is that because a jet change could take up to a few hours, on a sportbike for instance, by the time you've made 3 or 4 changes, the weather & temperature could be completely different from when you started, therefore you are not now comparing apples to apples!! 

The time factor itself is a major reason why 95% or more of the engines out there are not tuned even close to their potential. Most people don't want to take the time to tune the correct way. 

 

This is one of the areas the FC, (1000 or 2000 series) will utterly change the time factor & precision factor. With the Flo-C installed you can try several settings even without a remote control in no time at all. With the remote you can of course tune "real-time". Not much more should need to be said about the tuning advantage of the FC. You are getting the tuning advantage as a bonus to the performance boost you get thru the synchronizing effect (with the FC 1000, & the air-flow effect on the FC2000). 

Once you installed the FC, try it at its initial recommended setting. This setting is just a basically "neutral" setting, at which the mixture itself isn't changed hardly at all, under normal circumstances. Take your notes. Then try it 1 turn in, then, one turn out from that original setting. Now you will have a base run, one run richer & one leaner. Either keep going, in the direction that makes it better till the power starts to fall off. Now, back up to where it was best, using off course smaller increments of adjustment to really hone in on that "spot-on" setting. Even if you don't super-fine tune, you will be in much better shape than before, even with just 1/2 to 3/4 turn increments. If you wind up at an extreme rich or extreme lean adjustment of the FC`s adjustment range, gen. 2 to 3 jet sizes) the FC is obviously telling you you need to go one way or the other accordingly, with the jets. After installing the jet(s) you simply turn the setting back to "mid-range" then fine tune from there. Its extremely simple once you see how simple & easy it is to work with. We make sure that you can't go so lean with the adjustment with our system that you could go into the zone of being dangerously lean, or lean enough to hurt anything. If you are that lean you have other issues, but, the FC would let you know that anyway!!!

OR

You can also get your first three tests (depending on your set-up & application, you could be talking minutes, or seconds with a remote control unit), then call or e-mail us your results. We then have a baseline to help you get the jetting correct (if it is too far off) then get the fine tuning correct. This is with both the pilot & main circuit where applicable.  We are here for service after the sale as much as we are here for the sale!!

sk@performance-design.net    334-693-9203