dan williams

I’d say this went south very fast but it pretty much started there.

You mean a circle, er, discussion?

Reminds me of this...

When I got off my beloved 2008 Rev3 onto the 2013 EVO I was surprised at the difference in finding traction in the slippery stuff. The EVO just tracked better, climbed better and felt like an all around more planted ride. What's interesting is the difference between my 2013 and 2018 EVOs is much smaller and I can happily hop on the 2013 without any change to my riding. When I tried to ride my '08 I got off thinking, "How the hell did I ever ride this thing?" The answer is, of course, badly but that's more my lack of ability. But the EVO is worlds better without losing that Beta feel.

White frame and fenders, sooo pretty. Wish my 2018 still had the white frame.

"Hey you", works pretty well. Mostly because we are all too old now to remember names and we all think we know more than anybody else. ?

Get a long thin flat blade screwdriver. Actually buy a couple because you’ll lose them. Grind the end round. Voila! Beta mixture adjusting tool.

Yeah that was Don Sweet’s suggestion but I still want the surety of moving neutral to somewhere it won’t interfere with section riding if it’s possible. I do think it’s funny after all that talk about no transmission or clutch issues you admit you had springs made and are just now realizing the stepped washers can be flipped to change preload. By design the gear selector has a restoring force which indexes the drum. This means the mechanism is supposed to chase the drum into the proper position as the likelyhood of indexing the drum to exactly the correct position using just the lever is pretty small. This fits well with the idea that around the neutral half notch there is insufficient restoring force if the throw of the mechanism doesn’t rotate the drum into the full gear engagement. It also means that just tapping the shift lever or even an impact acting on the weight of the lever may be sufficient to pop the indexing cam to the neutral position. I have noticed the majority of times the bike has popped into neutral has been after an impact or bounce on the suspension. I think the revised shift cam Beta now uses is to address the throw of the restoring force which is reduced by the too large bearing used for the indexing arm. The actual force and indexing location remain the same. What they should have done is made the notch deeper in first and second gear but the indexing pins don’t allow that modification. In a few years we’ll all be on electric bikes anyway and this will be moot.

Without taking apart a whole pile of bikes to analyze the hardware it’s, at best, a guess. Slightly mis-machined parts can have a huge effect on operation of the shift mechanism. If you look at any of my past posts you can see I’m pretty quick to admit when I’ve got it wrong. I won’t say something actually works until it’s in my machine and proved itself by not failing in some spectacular way. It’s also why I post what I’m doing here. Gives you guys a chance to pee on it in case there’s some obvious thing I missed. Engineering is the science of, “Whoa! Didn’t see that coming.”

I’m old enough to admit American idiom is starting to escape even me. By solder you mean the melty metal for plumbing and circuit assembly? The only use I know of soder is a product name soderwick. Then again an online dictionary says soder is an archaic form of solder so maybe the pronunciation just stuck. All I really know is tin based solder sucks. Especially to rework.

Waiting to see Jordi’s facebook post on TRS branded beer goggles.?

Ohhhh now I understand?

That’s ****** with a K to you. ? ... and really isn’t that what any forum is until the weather warms up again? ?

Ah a straight up solopsist viewpoint. I’ve ridden Betas since ‘89. I’ve never had a stator fail but I’ve seen friend’s bikes miraculously cured by a stator rewind. I’ve never had a cracked frame but Beta replaced all frames in ‘09 for free so there may have been a problem. Beta has changed the clutch assembly several times over the last few years so there may be something to that. This year there’s a new shift cam. Seems like a lot of expense for no issue doesn’t it? I’m glad your bikes have been trouble free. Mine have been mostly trouble free. When they haven’t I fix them and share the results. I’m curious why you seem to have an issue with that?

Sir ed, The 2013 occasionally jumped out of second when it was new but eventually sort of settled in and stopped misbehaving. The 2018 has jumped out of first and second.

It’s got a few dings and is probably closer to the frame than new but it won’t affect the engine enough to be noticable. Probably be a bit more of a pain to take off but that’s one of Beta’s pecadillios. I can tell you one thing for sure. Don’t stick your leg or any other meat part under it in a crash. Still filling in the hole on my leg from August. On the bright side, once you burn away the nerve endings it doesn’t hurt.?

I've never heard of anyone changing their float valve size as an engine tuning procedure. Typically the float valve is sized to be large enough or larger. It looks like the parts manual for your bike does call out the 200 float valve and someone may have upped it to handle a fuel starvation issue. On the larger Betas with the Keihin the valve size is actually too small but it only manifests during long high speed runs when at full throttle the bike will starve for fuel after about a minute. The Keihin valve seat is just drilled into the body so there's no way to replace it like the Mikunis and Dellortos. The float valve is a conical valve with a similar seat shape. It only needs to be open a tiny amount for full flow so a nick or fleck of grit on the seat can hold it open. You probably fixed the flooding problem more by cleaning than changing valve size. As you have figured out already what you have that causes the run-on is a lean condition which is usually caused by a blocked pilot jet, too small a pilot jet or an air leak. You can check for an air leak by spraying starting fluid around the intake manifold while the bike is running. There should be no change in the engine. This is a procedure that can be dangerous so only short bursts in targeted areas. Have a fire extinguisher handy and do it outside where it is well ventilated. Jets and passages are best cleaned with compressed air. Again in a well ventilated area since you may be spraying residual fuel. Be careful of pressure as you can damage seals in the carb with too much. Some will advocate running a wire through a jet to clean it. Don't. If you change the diameter of the jet by either abrading the hole larger of leaving residual material in the orifice you lose any reference point for jetting. That you change the idle air/fuel mixture screw position and hear no change would point to either a way off pilot jet or blockage in that circuit. Since you didn't change the jetting I think you are in for a disassemble and clean of the carb. The DellOrto uses a fuel circuit for the idle adjust so it's possible though unlikely that is blocked. The only other thing I can think of because I've seen it on Keihins is a situation where the choke circuit doesn't properly shut leaking air into the pilot circuit. In any case a clean carb is a happy carb so it's always reassuring to know you've gone through the carb and it's in top form. Good luck tracing it down.

The jig is in and fits like it was made for this. Which it was. Let the fettling begin!

The master has spoken. I’ve found it best to do as he suggests.

It’s not the overflow on the bottom of the float bowl that’s usually the problem. It’s the vent tubes on the side of the carb.

My jig for making alignment holes to place the neutral between any two gears is in. I think I’ll try setting neutral between fourth and fifth to start with.

Nip a hole in each of the plastic vent tubes halfway up the carb body. Done. The stock tubes are so long they end below the float bowl so if fuel gets splashed up into the tube it acts like a siphon which is why the thing will keep flowing. If you nip a hole up above the float bowl the fuel will flow back into the float bowl.

Ah now that's funny because the reason I was told they went to non-stop was exactly that. So they took away one of the most interesting parts of the sport (trick riding) and now it's not even interesting to riders. Huh, who'd a thunk it.

I guess I’m a bit weird but I liked the upside-down forks. Especially with the fork brace.

Yeah kind of a crap shoot. If you can find one that's been sitting on the shelf for years you can sometimes get it cheap but usually rarity causes the seller to want top dollar.