Ok, long story short. 2006 XL1200L. Running great till Friday, battery dead. One week without riding till I could but new battery. Rode for another week, but exhaust smelled like it was running rich, wasn't like that before sitting for a week. Actually smells like I'm riding with the gas cap off, the smell of unburned fuel is strong coming from exhaust. No leaks, my mileage is not suffering. This is my daily commuter to work. Where can I start looking to see why the the fuel smell appeared. Thanks.

 

Look at your cases below the carb. Right where you push rods are. If you noticed a slightly different color, like something has stained there, then gas is leaking from the carb. Sometimes you won't notice it unless you look. Start the bike and take a short ride and then keep looking. Gas evaporates fast so you have to catch it in the act. Usually if you have fuel running into your pipes you will get a cool looking flame out of there. If you have a carb leak then there are a few places it could be coming from. I had a fuel leak that I noticed by the smell when I hit traffic going to work. I knew something was wrong and found the leak coming from my carb. Turned out to be a tiny,tiny o ring that is in your accelerator pump. Amazing how much fuel that sucker could leak. How the o ring went bad I will never know. It didn't look bad but it was.

 

I don't see your geographic location. Did the weather change significantly during the time it was sitting with a dead battery? If the temperatures changed a lot during that time, it can cause the bike to be rich, or lean, depending on if it got warmer or cooler.

 

I will check for leaks around the carb as suggested, thanks for replying.

As for the weather, the day the battery died and the day after it hit 17 degrees. The following week while the bike was in the garage it was in the 20s and 30s over night and 30s and 40s during the day. Right now we are in the 40s and 50s.

I wanted to check all adjustments on my carb. When I bought the bike used, the dealer said the previous owner had added something to the carb to go with the Screaming Eagle slip on pipes. But it looks like stock parts. How can I determine if the previous owner did put in something like a stage 1 kit?

 

There will be a screw that is up in a cylinder on the back off the carb. It isn't very big. On a stock carb this screw is covered by a plug. You will more than likely have to take the carb off the manifold to see it. That or drop the float bowl and see what jets are in it.

 

Does the bike have stock air cleaner? Easiest way to tell that is if it still has the scoop air intake on the back side of the ham can air cleaner. I can't tell that from the sig pic.

 

Not necessarily, before i drilled the front of my back plate all I had were holes in the back. You could not tell just by looking at it. The scoop was unaffected.

 

I said the easiest way.

 

Yeah I guess you did lol. Doh!!!!!

 

Thanks. I will look at the Scoop Air intake. I'll have to wait till I get some spare time to look at the jets and the screw on the carb. Thanks for the help guys. I really want to learn more about my bike. I like the idea of working on my own bike, just need to know what I'm doing. Thanks again.