"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Spamlet wrote:
It's very like an old carburettor float chamber; that one used to have
to tickle to get it to fill right up.
The purpose of the tickler was to flood the carb thus giving an over rich
mixture for cold starting. Not to allow it to 'fill up'. In other words it
disabled the cut off valve by lowering the float.
--
*I don't suffer from insanity -- I'm a carrier
Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
Er,
The flood on motorcycles is/was usually done by filling the carb right up
until it overflowed: some bikers might have had the patience to try
different levels of overfilling, but most, in my experience just kept
tickling, or holding the tickler down, until fuel ****ed out everywhere.
Ideally you don't want it to flood (out of the carb, or into the head), as
this wastes petrol and, especially on old bikes with external magnetos and
or coils, is rather a dodgy thing to do. Mind you, I think that many bikers
will have fond memories of holding the float depressed until the fuel gushed
forth and up their arm, and put their fag out! Ah, those permanently smelly
fingers and gloves... Still have the souvenir dermatitis.
On my Ducati, where the front carb slopes at a different angle to the rear,
it is particularly fiddly to get the fuel level to cross the main jet in the
right place, and indeed, they made transparent float bowls to help. For the
front cylinder, I did, in fact, find that, if the tab on the float was high
enough to reach the end of the tickler at all, the cylinder was too rich all
the time, as the bumps on the road ensured it was being 'tickled all the
time'. No doubt the modern ones have solved this, but, as the back cylinder
picks up quite easily, it's no big deal.
S