Tip of the day-The idle Jet

Hi All,

Food for thought and a quick tip to make maint. and flying better.

During the annual you are supposed to remove the float bowls and look for debris and weigh the floats. It's on the maint. checklist. Since you are into this this far you might as well take 5 minutes and remove and clean the idle jet. I just push the carb back out of its rubber socket so I can tilt the bottom towards me and raise it up a couple of inches to clear the heat shield / drip tray. 

So while the bowl is off you can take a flat tip screwdriver and unscrew the idle jet located right next to the brass protruding main jet. I find most at least half clogged and some fully clogged. If you hold the jet up to the sunlight you should see a small clean hole through the center of the jet. Most times you can barely see it or not at all. This causes harder starts. Take a 8" piece of #14-18 gauge wire and strip back about 5" of the insulation. Unwind just one strand . This is how tiny the hole through the center of the idle jet is. DO NOT use a drill bit or anything else along this line. This will damage the jet hole, but the wire will not. I've been doing it like this for almost 20 years and never had an issue.  Put the single strand of wire through the center of the idle jet and slide it back and forth and twist it in circles. This will break up any debris and dried fuel. Then follow up with some spray carb cleaner like "Brake Clean" with the 6" long red nozzle. It's small and fits inside the jet for a good flushing down through both ends of the jet. Now follow that with some high pressure air. Now that this is done look through the idle jet again against the light and you should see a small, but nice clean passage through the center of the idle jet. Now just screw it back in place and replace the bowl and floats. Owners that don't seem have have easy starts can do this anytime. If someone has a really high unequal vacuum on their gauges on one carb at idle during a carb sync you can have the same issue with the idle jet and may need cleaning. 

This is easy and quick to do while the bowl is off so you might as well do the next best thing and be that cut above average.