I was having trouble with my 89 NT650 Hawk GT. After much beer, foul language, phone calls to parts companies, trips to dealers, etc... I think I finally solved the issues. Here's a bit of a recap. I bought the bike in July 2003 with a Two Bros full exhaust, Factory Pro Stage 3 Jet Kit, Factory Pro ignition advancer & uni pods on it. I Exchanged the TBR system for a M4 full system. I wanted the center stand back & using the TBR prevents that. M4 head pipes are significantly smaller than TBR. I removed the uni pods since the local Hawk guru (he has 7 of them) said they are useless for anything other than track duty. I put the stock air box back on with a OEM Honda filter. Ever since those two changes, the bike ran worse & worse. It was very hard to start on a cold day. The major symptom was a very annoying (bordering on dangerous) stumble between 5500-7500 rpm. I tried new plugs, new fuel filter, etc, nothing worked. Finally I had enough & was going to let a mechanic fix it. That was until he said he wanted $350 plus parts "just to look at it". That's BS. I tried to do as much research as I could since I'm not paying anyone $350 just to look at it. Looking thru the Honda manual, it didn't seem to hard to take the carbs apart so I figured I'd give it a try. After getting the carbs off the bike, I called Factory Pro. They have a 1-800# on their parts boxes stating they have a computer data base with popular & sucessful jetting set ups. I was on the phone with the Rep for over 1.5 hours. He gave me step by step instructions to take the carbs apart & check out what I had. Surprisingly, the carbs were clean enough to eat out of. No gum or varnish, just spic & span & the jets & needles looked brand new. The problem was the jet sizes. The bike was jetted so far past where it needed to be, the Rep said the bike should never have been able to start let alone run. He gave me the recommended settings for the jets, screws & springs. A quick trip to the local parts counter got me the required jets for $9. After all was re-assembled, it runs & starts fine. It just needs to be sync'd. I'm going to do a few shake down rides next week to make sure everything is as it should be. I would like to say, for going above & beyond in the customer service department, Factory Pro rules in my book. KC-10 FE out... lane: :usa2:
Nice.. folks like that are starting to be hard to come by. Glad to hear it all worked out. Sheesh! I need to get one of those bikes as a second bike.
Get one, you won't regret it. I never fail to have a big, silly grin on my face after I'm done riding mine. Don't do anything to it other than the exhaust. The stock one is a bit on the goofy looking side. Mine has so many upgrades that it can't realistically be compared to a "normal" one anymore. KC-10 FE out... lane: :usa2:
Over my 20 plus years working on motorcycles on a full time basis, there have been so many times I've made a crappy running bike run decent by installing the OE jetting. Years ago I did some pretty extensive (carbs off several times) tweaking on a stock Hawk GT for a picky customer. I liked it best with the stock jetting but the mixture screws turned out about 3.5...the customer liked it best with the stock jetting but the slide needles shimmed around .020 inches.
1. took out 155 main jets & 45 pilots jets 2. installed 142 front cylinder & 138 rear cylinder with 42 pilots jets 3. fuel screws are set to 2.5 turns from full in 4. springs stretched to 8" Runs like a champ now & just needs to be sync'd. KC-10 FE out... lane: :usa2:
