I am in Mysore, toiling! (part 3)

Life sure has taken me to places ,albeit without my bike! and when I saw superb highways here, I miss my bike even more.
If things appear to be taking more time here, next on my agenda would be to ride to mysore from pune.Although
that seems to be long shot.In near future I am looking forward to meet my friend sandeep from banglore, who is a great bike enthusiast and also owns a P200.He will be riding from banglore to here.
lets see how it goes.

I am in Mysore, toiling! (part 2)

The thing is that I am on roaming and friends and family of mine have been calling up like never before.Add to that unlimited gprs, all raking up huge bills.But as they say old habbits die hard and I can't resist net surfing and just now I discovered that blogspot works nicely from mobile, shrewd minded of you must have guessed that I am blogging from mobile,hence every post can have only 450 words and thats why I am breaking up the posts.

I am in Mysore, toiling! (part 1)

I guess there are some loyal readers if not many to this little blog of mine.So hello there everybody! and sorry for no activity on blog for some time, but you see, yours truly is holed down here in Mysore,karnataka at lovely Infosys campus as me happens to be employed by them.And yes the bike is currently enjoying holiday at home,free from my thrashing!
but no worries bebe wll be back soon and me promises a huge review on p200 very soon.
bbye!

Meddling with carburettor

Last few days of mine were lost into digging information about Fuel Injection and Carburettor and thankfully with help of some of my friends and netsphere I was able to get a good dose of knowledge.
P200 being a carburetted one I concentrated on carb mostly.As you might be knowing, carb plays a vital role in welfare of your bike's health.A detuned carb can greatly reduce the performance and efficiency.While a neatly adjusted carb can do wonders.
The fact also helps that carbs are much easy to tune/alter than FI.It doesn't need all that electronic gadgetry which FI needs. Once you get to know the basic hardware of carb its easy to do a makeshift operation on it in case anything goes wrong.
In my case the fuel efficiency had gone awry and engine was jerky in 1st and 2nd gear.When I enquired with some, it turned out that carb was set for too rich mixture(which meant it was forcing more than necessary fuel into engine).
Locating the volume control screw is easy.In fact its the only screw on LHS of carb other than the one for setting idle.Besides its bronze color so no mistaking!









As from the pic, I don't need to say the obvious, But will say it nevertheless!
Turning right the carb will channel less fuel and more air making it lean while turning it left will channel more fuel and less air(as in my case).
So adjust it accordingly.
However don't go overboard on either side. Maintaining it on a perfect position is best and will give you right amount of performance coupled with efficiency.
(Remember one thing turning it completely towards right or left doesn't mean peak efficiency or performance respectively) For engine's health you must maintain the balance.
There is one cliche though. Before you embark onto this learn to read your spark-plugs.Don't panic!!Its easy and a must know for enthusiast biker.
Remove both the sparks and check their electrodes for color.
If its more on the brownish side your bike is running on leaner mix if its way too much black your bike is running on rich mix. So ideally it should be dark-brown(almost black but not black!).
When you adjust the volume control ride the bike for a few kilometres and then check for color of the spark plugs tune it accordingly until your bike is running on balanced mix.
One more precaution to take- Don't turn the volume control like you do with normal screws.Do it slowly and only by half or a quarter turn at a time.Its much sensitive.

Update On Fuel Efficiency After some tune-up

Time for quick update, I am in hurry(some of you might be wondering)!As usual I went to Pune last week.Yes it is one place I am always ready to go, superb highway from my town to Pune is one of the reasons.Other reasons follow -
Once there I wound up some unfinished businesses of last 3 tumultuous years of MCA.:)
Then I went to new Probiking authorised service station in Pune.(readers if any from pune - Its on sinhgad road behind IBP petrol pump.name-B.K.Automobiles).I had a prearranged appointment with Mr.Vivek Pendharkar of BK auto.
I had already called him and told him about my bike's falling fuel efficiency and front disc brake that was way too much effective.
So upon reaching there , they quickly went onto business and opened the front disc caliper.Due to rains and my recent trip to konkan had deposited a lot of dirt in it and there was not much lubrication also.
So the calipers were polished with sand-paper and front wheel's axle was greased.
Secondly, carburettor was cleaned and checked for fuel mix.It turned out that the mixture was too rich.Thus channeling much more fuel into engine than necessary.This was the primary reason behind fallen efficiency.
Although I don't know how did it happen.
Anyway it was corrected and also Idle RPM was set.

All said and done, time for real road testing.Here's the cracker - Right after the tuning, bike returned 42kmpl in Pune's horrible traffic.Then I embarked on return journey to home.Believe it or not , on highway at a steady 65kmph she returned astonishing 48Kmpl.

When ridden hard like some occasional bursts to 100kmph or above and steady at 80kmph , it was down to 40kmpl, but still me think it is very very commendable.
Whoever said that performance comes at efficiency's cost, I am sorry, eat your words.