Hello. Im pulling my hair out over this issue... got a 185s and cleaned the carb out good pulled all the jets all that stuff. ran pretty rich so kept adjusting... adjusted too much and the air screw rattled out. Bought carb rebuild kit off of ebay. rebuilt carb... after hours and hours of adjusting only runs good half choke. on no choke when you hit the throttle it bogs. idles fine but bogs and if you hold it down will die. half choke runs pretty good but on deacelreation backfires in exhaust. so i put all the old carb parts back in and tryed that. then it runs way to lean and doesnt idle right.. idle will go up and down and runs way too rich. put new stuff back in and adjusted for hours. still runs good half choke. pretty new at carbs but i know it up and down now.. am i just not adjusting it right or is there somthing else i need to look at. is it okay to run it half choke? the engine seems to get pretty hot so is that normal or am i overheating it.? not sure where to go from here. could use some help. Thanks

 

and im not sure if adjusting the float will do anything for this issue... what does the float control? and how do you adjust it

 

If it only runs good on half choke it`s running too lean, it`s not getting enough fuel so the choke half closed limits the amount of air it can get. The float don`t have a adjustment, it`s job is to close the needle when the bowl is full, when it`s full the float rises to the top and closes the needle in the seat. The idle adjustment screw should be 2 turns out. if it won`t run on that setting and you keep having to turn the adjustment out to get it to idle it`s too lean. My 83 185 would not idle anywhere and it always ran rich and had little compression, but didn`t really smoke much. When I got it apart, I found the intake guide was so worn it had ruined the valve, the seat of the valve was so thin it was about to break. It sounds like your carb is stopped up with trash, a industrial sonic cleaner would help it alot, if it`s sonic cleaned and still doesn`t work properly then the carb is no good. They have brand new ones on ebay for $60, I think the name brand is Rondo or something like that. I purchased one for my 200s and it runs fine.

 

my 250 ex did that found that the slide was not properly installed

 

how can you install a slide improperly. It only goes in one way because of the notch. if you dont get it in right it will be wide open all the time. Explain how yours was not right. thanks

 

the spot where the notch goes was worn down just enough making it possible to not lineup right.

 

My 200s did the same thing. I cleaned the carb, the bike would run fine for a couple of minutes and then only on half choke while on throttle. I recleaned the carb (jets and all) and installed an inline fuel filter between the tank and carb. I have run 4 tanks of fuel since, and have not had the same problem. Don't get frustrated, it doesn't sound like a huge problem. Good Luck.

 

I had almost the same problem with my 1980 185. It had sat for a long time and had lots of glue like stuff and chunks clogging it up. I took the carb off and pull it all apart. Had to do a lot of to get things cleaned up and working. Used good old BrakeKleen first to get the heaviest stuff out of there, then followed up by soaking everything in carb cleaner overnight. Then blew everything out with the air compressor. Also, cleaned out the tank and petcock along with the fuel filter too. Put everything back together and it started and ran just fine.

Couple of other things I've found over the years that you may want to check.

* Bad Gas?? Never hurts to try fresh stuff.
* Plug Gap??

Biggest thing though is making sure the carb is really clean and the adjustments are all correct. Best thing to do if you are going to clean it out is to just throw a rebuild kit in it while you are at it. Then you're sure.

 

Brandon, like Southerfrog sez, not a huge problem really. Just go through each thing step by step until you find the problem. Don't assume anything, don't skip any steps and check everything. The very thing that you don't check assuming it is good will more than likely turn out to be the culprit. You may end up spending a little more time on it but it will be worth it in the end.

I've always followed this advice and it has served me well.

"You can do things two different ways. A couple of times really fast or once just a little slower".