I'm working on a friend's bike and noticed in the manual that there is different jetting, jet needle, and needle clip position for an 04 and 04.5. It looks like they richened the main jet, used a different needle and raised the clip to the 4 position. The bike is having trouble idling without the choke pulled slightly and it's been fouling plugs. If when I take the carb apart and find nothing wrong I'm wondering if I should go with the 04.5 carb specs. From what he's describing it deffinately sounds like the bike is running lean, I'm guessing that maybe Polaris figured this out and when they upgraded during the model year made some adjustments. Has anyone done this to their bike?

 

looks like if it was build b4 10/02/03 it used the leaner parts(smaller main, 155 vs. a 157.5) but if the choke has to be pulled out to make it run better it would be leaner but you said its fouling plugs too.

 

Pulling the choke out draws fuel into the starter circuit from the float chamber through the starter jet thereby enriching the mixture not leaning it. That's why I'm thinking the 04.5 needle might solve the problem. I took the carb apart last night and it was pretty dirty overall so after I clean it up and run it again I'll see if the problem persists if it does I'll probably go with the later jetting set-up.

One thing I was surpise to see was the the 700 has a smaller carb than the 500, 34mm vs 40mm.

 

the small carbs tend to rev up quicker. if its dirty maybe thats all the problem it has. let us know.

 

Put it all back toghther and ran it around a little bit last night. It idled and ran fine except it acted like it wanted to die when I would come to a stop, only momentarily though, almost acts like the float might be a little high and wants to flood out. I did noticed when I had the carb apart that the float was set on the high side of the scale so I may set it towards the lower end and see what happens. I had a similar float problem with my 500 until I lowered the float setting. My buddy does want me to put in the later build year jet needle and larger main so I'll see how that works.