checking piston wash

RTYsxv

New member
Joined
Nov 16, 2007
Messages
326
Age
34
Location
Tracy, MN
How do you guys go about checking your piston wash? I've attempted to check it by shining a small LED flashlight down the spark plug hole but about all I can illuminate is the center of the piston, which doesn't help a whole lot. Do you use some small flexible light to stick down in there and light up the whole cylinder? Just wondering if there's some easy way to do it.
 
With a bendalight (small flashlight with a fiber shaft) and the piston at BDC you can see the whole piston top. The key is to get the light down in the cylinder with the fiber off to the side so you can see past it. If you don't have the light down in the cylinder it will not light up the edges very well.
 
SLP sells a nice bend a light, used mine many times on my Pro-X, it lights up the insides fine on my 800 twin, should light up the insides of a 700 triple even easier. Nothing better than being able to see for yourself that everything is going good inside :)
 
blue-point makes one too. you just have to be careful w/that one tho, as its very dellicate. also, steelman makes one and in a couple different lengths.
 
I found a little single-LED keychain light today that's really bright. It didn't work to stick inside the cylinder because the body was too long. But because it was small, I was able to put my eye right behind it and see down in there pretty well with the piston at BDC. From what I think I know about wash, I thought it was pretty good, I attached a pic I made on paint to show about what I saw. On the right side, the mark has 2 "arms" on it as shown. This is the PTO cylinder, and the others had the same shape except the "arms" didn't stick out as far. The mag side cylinder had the smallest wash marks of the 3, but they were all really close. I was riding at about 25-30 degrees F. Is this what I want to be seeing?

pistonwash.jpg
 
I'm all stock for jetting right now, engine/clutches all stock as well, fuel screws 1 7/8 turns out I believe. I've heard that stock viper jetting is rich, but that must not be the case here. I want to be safe, what about raising the needles? I'm rarely at WOT, almost always in the midrange. I'm thinking it also wouldn't hurt to pull the carbs and thoroughly clean them, even though I already did it the end of September.
 
According to the service manual, stock viper jetting should be okay from -4 to 32 degrees F at sea level. It gets below zero here but then our elevation is also higher (1150 ft) so idk, I'm sure there's plenty of other variables as well. I just want the most reliable sled I can have. I think changing jet sizes would be too rich, overkill, so I'm thinking raise the needles one notch and take the fuel screw out to 2 turns. or maybe even 2 1/4 turns. Sound good?
 


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