I just had an idea....kinda hurt to. Take the carb off the bike. Take bowl off carb. Attach fuel hose to fuel inlet. Hook hose upto some kind of bottle filled with water. Hold carb level and operate float to see if it shuts off flow like it should. It sounds good in theory.
Sounds good right?

 

Trouble is you can exert more pressure on the float that way than the gas in the bowl is capable of so it won't tell you much.

Easire to just lift it with your finger and see how much pressure it takes to shut it off and then look at the angle of the top edge of the float as soon as the gas stops flowing.

If its horizontal or over horizontal your float height is way out of whack.

 

I'm a bit confused by the 0.450 measurement mentioned by fatty. My book seems to offer one measurement that I can find, and it says .725-.730. Am I looking at the wrong part of the book again? And a 0.005 tolerance on a measurement like this seems a little ridiculous, but I'll give it a whirl and I'll I'll add a little as spanner suggests.

 

look at the design of the carb and at what level the jets are in fuel.A tad higher than this level is all you need if you have fuel flow from the tank.I allways set my floats a little low just due to slosh when the motor is hot and I pick the bike up from the kick stand I dont want over flow.I also check it by blowing into the fuel fitting and pick up the float to see if it shuts my air off.If it is all the way up into the carb and over the top of the overflow its going to leak gas-------------------I quit measuring and just do this now

 

I think that is the wrong measurement unless its in some strange yankee system.

Use 10.49 - 11.51 mm (0.413-0.453 in) use the larger figure on your case.

 

"some strange yankee system?" LOL, nothin' strange here, I'm in the south! Whatever it is set at now is close, so I'll just add a bit until it stops. Thanks!

 

It depends on the float style. There was also an issue with older float needles that were recalled. 3 ribs vs. 4 ribs on the side. I just made sure the line on the float was parallel to the base of the carb when the float just closed. btw. .450 is between .413-.453

 

Well, what happened?

I can tell you this. I got my CV from a cat out in Cali. that rebuilds and makes them all new again, polished barrel and all. He does any carb for that matter if you send it to him, just sayin'.
The thing is, when I put my CV on and junked the $20 leaking Drag pitcock for the pingel, which I should got in the first place. Everything was fine until ONE day it just started leaking, kind of like overflow. But it wasn't, it was the plastic POS 90º fuel inlet. It looked perfect, and I mean perfect no crack visible, except where it was molded. The molded seam was leaking and I called brother man up and told him. I told him I forgot about them things breaking when I flipped Harley parts at the Dealer. I forgot to tell him to replace that plastic one with a solid brass one. He shipped me one and that was that. No leaks
Maybe this story is a little too much information....

But I would definitely check the 90º plastic junk inlet.


Cheers

 

That plastic elbow is on the '93 carb I'm now holding onto as a spare. My '89 carb has brass. Anyway, after fighting with this thing, adjust, install, leak, adjust, install, leak, I got to suspecting the float needle, so I dug the old one out of the trash. Side by side, they are a little different, the rubber cone is larger on the new, the spring loaded pin on the top is longer, the wire mount is larger. They both have 3 ribs. So I just put the old one back in, adjusted per the book (.725 on my '89 with the barbell type float, .450 on the '93 with the square float), and no over flow. I would think I could make that new one work, but the old one works, so I keep it. I'm thinking that new one would work in the '93, but not the '89, just a guess. So out of my $40 carb kit, I used the accelerator pump, which is cheaper made than the old one and I didn't really need, and a gasket and o-ring, which I didn't need either. So that $40 was just a waste of money. But my bike is happy, and that makes me happy.

 

glad to hear you got it squared away, bluharley