I have a 1978 carburetor 900 SS with some start-up problems. 40 mm carburetors are not equipped with starters, but only with manual enrichers. When I’m lucky, it starts at the first pedal stroke, otherwise there are no Saints to hold. So I always have to resort to the help of some biker. Will you give me some straight to solve this problem?

Mauro Casagrande

Stefano Ferrigno responds

Dear Mauro, I can essentially remind you of what is the standard procedure on thrusters of this type, equipped with an enricher of the mixture. Firstly, it is clearly essential to adopt a different strategy depending on whether the engine is cold (first start-up) or hot.

In the first case, once the enricher is activated, it is important not to accelerate while ctuing the crank, which must be pushed throughout its run, that is, until resistance is no longer felt. The accelerator must be operated sparingly only when the first bursts are felt, to facilitate the maintenance of the minimum.

Hot, or if the outside temperature is particularly high, the procedure is essentially the same, but excludes the use of the enricher. The main problem is in fact to try to avoid “drowning” the engine: the so-called flooding, due to the incorrect use of gas or enricher, in fact makes it almost impossible to start for some time.