Okay, so I recently bought a sherpa with some serious carb problems. This wasn't just "cold blooded" as everyone describes the stock sherpa, it was freaking erratic, even after being run for an hour. This sherpa popped like there were holes in the exhaust, would rev and die unexpectedly, and constantly lurch me about. It wouldn't idle or accelerate smoothly. I was worried, and my wife was even more worried because it was her new bike and neither of us had any experience with a carburetor.
Even before I bought the sherpa, however, I came across "Fix for that coldblooded sherpa!!" at
http://klrworld.com/forums/index.php/topic,1954.0.html and hoped that if I performed this re-jet, it would at least help the problem, and while I was in there, hopefully clean out the carb and try to get a bike that was comfortable for my wife to learn on.
So I contact Dr. Jekle and I must say, he is an incredibly nice and helpful guy. He offered to hold a set of jets for me until I got the bike, and once I did, DRJ shipped them out without me even paying for them yet! He also offered help and advice along with many others on this forum (see thread listed above). Being a newbie to a carb, I was pretty concerned, but they put my mind at ease and made me feel confident I could do this. By the way, he shipped them from Illinois on a Saturday, and they arrived at my house in Idaho (1500 miles away) on Monday. Jeez, Jekle, did you express them? (He didn't.)
So my wife and I tore apart the bike last night, carefully following DRJs instructions along with some assistance from the shop manual. I ended up rotating the carb instead of removing it, and was able to (carefully) do the job with the carb at around a 90 degree angle from where it normally sits. Ideally, I guess it should be upside down so things don't fall out, but luckily everything remained in place for me. It was pretty hard to pull the cables so tight as I rotated it, but we got it done.
The idle mix screw plug had already been removed, so I just adjusted it to make sure it was 2.75 turns out. The carb bowl screws weren't too bad either -- someone had been in there before. I would recommend, as others have, to replace the phillips head screws with allen head screws (DRJ says 4mmx15mm(4mm thread x 15mm long)) but I wasn't able to get some at the time (it was like 9:30p).
So after the bowl came off, I expected to see gunk and grime plugging up my carb. But...it was clean! Perfectly clean, nothing anywhere. I was so confused, and a little disheartened. I figured the rejetting will take care of "cold bloodedness" but isn't a magical cure-all for all things carb related, and I had some serious carb problems. So I went ahead and put the jets in (not hard at all) and put the thing back together. (By the way, you DO NOT have to take the floats off to rejet this thing, I thought you did.)
I fully expected the sherpa to act the same, or maybe a little better than it had been, because again, the pre-jetting symptoms were much more serious than what you would expect rejetting to fix. We were ready to start checking the air filter or something but decided to give it a go and see what it did.
OOOOHHHHHH MMMMMYYYYY GGGOOOSSSSHHHHH!!!!!!!!
IIITTT WWWWWOOORRRRRRKKKKSSSS!!!!!
The sherpa purrs. And I mean really, really runs beautifully. I was more surprised and pleased than if Orko from He-Man had come and cast a spell on my Sherpa to fix it. I choked it less than half-way and can turn off the choke in less than 30 seconds. It idles smoothly, accelerates smoothly, decelerates smoothly. No pops or backfiring. No hesitation. No lurching. No erratic behavior. It...just...runs...beautifully. I should also note that after my wife and I rode around on it for an hour after that, the exhaust headpipe, which previously would glow red, no longer did so.
I begged my wife to take it to work today. I had it up to 70mph and again, it ran like a dream. I'm 280 lbs and the little sherpa got me up to speed and going with no problems. It's so much fun to ride! This, for me, was indeed a magical cure-all!
Dr. Jekle, you are a godsend! And to everyone else to helped out and gave me advice: thank you!
