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View Full Version : ATC 200ES - Carb drain dribble, Carbony spark plug Questions.



Scardycat
05-07-2012, 06:47 PM
First post, and thanks to 3WW I now have a PDF of the manual.('84)

I'm borrowing a Big Red, use it at the old ranch here where I live, have a good trailer for it, and its a big step up from the garden cart, useful as garden carts are. Gophers and frost heave make for bumpy ground, even the big wheels on the garden cart get caught badly. The Big Red has had almost no servicing, and its a positive testament to Honda that it runs pretty well.

Like a post I saw by Dannyboy, this Big Red also drains fuel out of the nipple on the bottom of the float bowl. The screw there is well closed, this must also be an overflow also? Occasional fuel dribbles there. The manual didn't have much to say, except to inform that this was indeed a drain, and the screw there was its valve. Opening the screw a little did indeed drain a little gas. A tech. explanation of what else might be behind this nipple would help me.


When this Trike wouldn't start yesterday, I took the plug out, plugged it back into the spark terminal, grounded the plug's case, and cranked. No spark showed at all. There was alot of hard carbon on the whole tip. With the plug in my hand, ohms test from the hex-metal case to the small amount of hot electrode visible above the insulator cone, showed 36K ohms. This should easily have been grounding the spark, so, sure enough, after cleaning the whole tip area, and confirming the ohms to be infinite, the bike started immediately.

The plug is the NGK DR8ES-L as the manual states. Its extremely unworn, all sharp corners as in a new plug. Is it too cold? Other issues? The bike is certainly doing easy service, all low speed, no hills usually. If too cold, how many steps hotter would you recommend? I've heard that a 7 is hotter than this 8, correct? After a little use, the plugs leakage from its input electrode (wire pulled off) to motor case is about 10 million ohms, not the open circuit after I had just cleaned and dried it. I assume that this is from the carbon building up again. Any help from Trike old-timers?

Best Wishes,
The Scardycat

WJG1000W
05-07-2012, 07:16 PM
the nipple is a drain as well as a stand pipe to drain the bowl if it fills to high try to adjust the float that should lower the level and stop it this fuel overrunning that extra fuel could also darken the plug quite a bit since it would be running rich

Scardycat
05-08-2012, 12:12 AM
Thankyou for putting 2 and 2 together. So obvious now that its been said.

Today the Big Red ran well, started right up (with no choke, a sign of high bowl level, I guess). I forgot to put the tailgate onto the trailer and lost the lawnmower I was carrying, almost immediately, but not discovered till stopping at the gate. Better than losing a passenger and not noticing, I guess.

I've discovered the fuel shut off, so I thought I'd drain the bowl by driving and idling after shutting off the valve. The Trike will be sitting for awhile. The Trike ran a long way and then idled a long time before it ran out of fuel, another sign of a high float, I suppose. That float bowl is rather small.

Best Wishes,
The Scardycat