Homestead mailing list

["Fred Enga" <fenga AT astechman.com>]

Back in the days when I was in the British army, when we had to tune very
large gasoline straight 8 cylinder engines in heavy recovery vehicles fitted
with 3 SU carbs, the only way to balance the carbs was to drop off the
exhaust manifold and to adjust the carbs until the flames from all of the
exhaust ports were the same length.....noisy but quick and effective

Fred

-----Original Message-----
Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
Sent: March-09-09 4:14 AM
To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

> >DH and I had a discussion about this and I'm wondering if James and Ray 
> (it 
> is Ray who teaches music, right?) would have as much luck with touchy 
> calibrations.

In my misspent youth I was a Harley rider.  An impoverished Harley rider.
So 
the bike was old, not that it really makes much difference.  It had to be 
tuned with unrelenting regularity.

And the only way to do it was to ignore the calibrations and metrics and 
listen to it.  Specifically to listen to one cylinder and ignore the other
until 
the tone and rhythm were right for that cylinder.  The do the same with the 
other, of course, throwing the first one out of rhythm in the process.

When I went on long trips back then (Mexico, Alaska, etc.)  I left the
Harley 
at home and rode a large single cylinder rice burner that required all the 
finesse of working on a lawn mower.  

James