78 Goldwing Misfiring?

[maxv12]

I love my GL1000 but I’m almost at wits end with it. A few years back I had a neck injury and had to relocate, so my bike ended up sitting for a couple years.

Prior to putting it up it had a few instances where I was at a stop light and it stalled out and then gradually seemed to not run right. When I finally got the bike back, I went through it trying to troubleshoot it, readjusted the timing, put in new points, checked the compression, at this point it had been closer to 3 to 4 years of sitting.

Compression seemed low but was even in all 4 cylinders. When it was running it sounded like it was miss firing, I’d take it down the road and it had no power would miss fire and kind of buck and not want to accelerate tried to resync the carbs more than once.

In doing this after running at an idle for quite a while the temp would go up quite high and the fan wouldn’t come on. I put a box fan on the engine to try and cool it down. I ended up testing the fan and it worked so I took the thermostat switch off, took it apart, cleaned it and put it back in.

Anyway after all this is still didn’t work so I figured I needed to rebuild my carburetors, even though I did it a couple years before I put it up I figured gas must have been in it and gunked things up. I took the carbs off, dipped and cleaned them, got the kit from Randaks, and meticulously cleaned everything and made sure the floats were set where they needed to be and put it back together.

The bike was still not running correctly, still running poorly like a miss fire. I ended up looking for another set of coils with ballast on line and found a set that had been tested. I put those on and at the time picked the best plug wire caps and put those on.

I put new plugs in and changed the oil because I thought how it had been running maybe there was gas in the oil (and I think my son may have left the gas on, when he was messing around trying to start it up when his friends came over). It still ran badly. I tried resyncint the carbs but felt like I could never get them set up correctly.

That being said I gave up for a while and let it sit and tried to find someone local that I could bring it to. The person that was recommended stopped working on them and after I told him everything above he said he couldn’t think of anything else that I hadn’t already tried, but thought it was still an ignition thing.

He mentioned maybe the spark plug caps needed to be replaced, so I just bought new ends and put them on today. I kept turning the bike over and over, which it usually does a little bit when it’s been sitting for a while, but it took forever to get it to fire up, it was like it wasn’t getting any gas, then it finally started up and was running worst than it had before, grayish black smoke coming out that I thought was just from oil that had leaked by the valve guide seals from sitting for so long on the kick stand, but then I noticed two pools of liquid coming out of each of the exhaust pipes underneath the bike where they connect to the mufflers.

I’m guessing it was a mix of oil and maybe gas, it smelled strong but not strongly of gas. Maybe a float or something is stuck in the carbs are dumping fuel in but I can’t imagine it is with as careful as I was redoing the carbs.

At this point I’m really turned around on it and don’t even know where to start. I’d really like to find someone to bring it to but I guess that’s easier said than done as no one works on these old bikes anymore. Any thoughts on what to do or where to start would be appreciated, or if anyone knows someone near Mooresville NC that still works on these please let me know.

[Whiskerfish]

Have you done the idle drop? That will tell you if you have a dead jug or not.

Otherwise go to harbor freight and buy a 25 dollar IR laser temp gun. Start it up from cold and check the header temps continuously jumping back and forth from side to side. See if one or more are significantly slower than the others to heat up. If it is a side to side discrepancy you can swap the spark plug leads between 1 and 2 and see if it follows or stays the same. Then you can repeat the process with the 3 and 4 wires. If the issue does not move then check your belts to make sure they have not skipped a tooth and then pull the carbs again.

Normally I start from a complete tune up when chasing a problem. Pull the plugs clean replace as needed, check Valve clearance, and then points/ timing etc etc... Once I go through all that and do an idle drop I can make a confident decision of if the carbs need to come off or not.

If all else fails throw it on a trailer and bring it to Norfolk.

[maxv12]

Thanks for all of the advice! Right now, I can’t even get it to idle so I wouldn’t be able to do the idle drop or temp check. If one of the jugs was dead and it was dumping oil into the fuel would that make the bike sound like it was knocking? I only had it running for a short time but when it first started it was loud then quieted down a bit but was dumping a lot of fluid on the ground. Like I said at the time it didn’t have a strong smell of gas but this morning I could smell it in my garage and what was in the floor had evaporated and don’t have a heavy oil stain on the floor. I’ll double check the valve clearance and check the belt. It’s been on the bike around 5 or six years but only has a few hundred miles on it. At the time I had checked the valve clearance. The other thing I forgot to mention is there are two brass fittings on the carbs for vacuum lines that came out when I cleaned the carbs. I pressed them back in and checked them after the bike was running and sprayed around them to see if they were leaking and didn’t apnea to be. Anyway I’ll try the tune up things you said to see if it makes a difference. It doesn’t make sense though, back a few months prior I could at least get the bike ring enough to make adjustments and now it’s worse. I’m just hoping I didn’t run it to much with fuel in the oil and toast the rings/engine. Thanks again for the trouble shooting advice!

[gltriker]

From the multiple times you have said gasoline must be leaking into the exhaust, etc. you must now remove the carburetors off the engine and take care of the fuel inlet control issues. First.

Fuel leaking into and collecting in a cylinder can lead to a hydraulic lock in that cylinder, typically bending its connecting rod when attempting to start the engine.

Synchronizing the 4 carburetors' idle speed does nothing to address the immediate problem./ Problems.

[tlbranth]

One thing that could cause flooding even though you did a good job of cleaning and float adjusting is dimpling of the float tang. This has happened to me on my CB750 and it took me a while to find the problem. Dimpling, where the needle valve contacts the float tang, can cause the needle to stick open, and sometimes inconsistently. If you do go into the carbs again you should check this. It'll be an indent in the tang.
Other than that, I'm with Whisker: start at the beginning and check all your settings. It's a frustrating engine to deal with. I decided to eliminate spark problems altogether by replacing coils, wires and caps. If I was doing it again I'd use 5 ohm coils and chuck the ballast resistor.
Good luck. Stick with it and it'll come around.

[maxv12]

Thanks for the added advice Cliff and Terry. I really hope I didn’t screw up the connecting rods. I can’t lie I’m not looking forward to taking the carbs out again, but my wife won’t let me put it in the house as a piece of art so I guess I have to figure out how to fix it. Lol

[Sidecar Bob]

Did you change the condensers when you did the points?
I had a condenser go bad on a bike with points once; At first it would gradually lose power and nothing I did could keep the RPM up so I had to coast to the side of the road and wait until it decided to start again. After a while it started getting harder & harder to start but after replacing the condenser it fired on the 1st or 2nd kick and ran consistently.

Re gas in the oil: it isn't likely if you fully rebuilt the carbs but if you didn't separate them from the plenum have a look at the bottom of the plenum when it has been running. If you see fuel on the bottom of the plenum your problem could be one or more leaking carb to plenum seals.

[maxv12]

Well I started from scratch like Whiskerfish recommended. First I checked the plugs to see if the are getting spark, and they are. That being said, when I pulled them the #1 and #2 plugs were black and still a little wet. The #3 and #4 plugs were pretty clean. I pulled the timing belt covers off and checked the belts to make sure it didn’t skip a tooth and everything checked out, the belts are in the correct position. I then checked the valve clearance. The #1 intake valve needed to be adjusted. It was between .0015 an .002, so I adjusted it to .004. The #4 exhaust valve and #2 intake valve were just a hair tight when sliding the .004 feeler gauge through so I adjusted those. I checked the timing and it appeared to fine and in answer to Sidecar Bobs question, I did change the condenser when I changed the points. So, the question is do I get new plugs, reset the carb fuel mixtures to original settings, change the oil and see if it will start and try to do the idle drop? Or based on knowing it was dumping a lot of fuel out of the exhaust, do I first pull the air filter out and turn it over to see if fuel is filling up in the plenum and if it’s not do I just pull the carbs again to see if there is something wrong with them? If I take the carbs off the brass fittings I mentioned earlier that came out when I rebuilt the carburetors are the slow air jets. If I take the carbs off what should I use to seal them onto the carbs so they won’t come out or do they normally just press into the carburetors? I sprayed around them when the bike was running and it didn’t appear that they were taking in air.

[gltriker]

If I take the carbs off the brass fittings I mentioned earlier that came out when I rebuilt the carburetors are the slow air jets. If I take the carbs off what should I use to seal them onto the carbs so they won’t come out or do they normally just press into the carburetors? I sprayed around them when the bike was running and it didn’t appear that they were taking in air.

I wonder about that, too. The elbows are a light press fit.

[Sidecar Bob]

I'd look in the plenum. It isn't hard to do and if it is dry it eliminates a possible cause.

[robin1731]

If I take the carbs off the brass fittings I mentioned earlier that came out when I rebuilt the carburetors are the slow air jets. If I take the carbs off what should I use to seal them onto the carbs so they won’t come out or do they normally just press into the carburetors? I sprayed around them when the bike was running and it didn’t appear that they were taking in air.

I wonder about that, too. The elbows are a light press fit.

Just push them back in. No need to seal them.

[robin1731]

" Or based on knowing it was dumping a lot of fuel out of the exhaust,"

If it's dumping raw fuel the carbs have to come off. Most likely float valves not sealing if it is that much. And you can check for fuel leaks before you put the carbs back on the bike.

[redglbx]

Like Bob said, check the plenum first thing, if it’s dry that’s good and a bit easier but imho the carbs still need to come out. I’d bet that you have either a plugged idle circuit which “dipping” a carb generally won’t fix. To check that it’s clear pull the carbs, pull the bowls and pull the idle mixture screws out.

Use a can of carb cleaner with the end of the plastic straw sanded to a taper and then spray into the idle jets, it should come out of the idle screw holes (protect your face here) and if it does the screw the idle screws back in a bit and spray into the idle jets again to make sure it comes out of the tiny idle discharge hole by the throttle blade.

If all that’s fine, then recheck the float levels and if they’ve changed at all see Cliffs comments above. Also I’ve had a few bikes that I’ve done where the spring loaded pin on the float needle has lost it’s tension either by varnishing up or the spring just going south. New needles are in your future, not the cheap Chinese/Taiwanese/Korean/junk on flea bay. This is one area you can’t cheap out on !

Also on all this you can’t Just pick & choose what you want to do in these cases, start at the very beginning,check/verify everything as you go, all of it ! You said you just replaced the sparkplug caps, did you check that the old ones were indeed bad ? They should be less than 5k ohms when measured across them, did you check the new one’s ? I have had brand-damn new ones bad out of the box, particularly from the aforementioned Chinese/Taiwanese/cheap junk.

One other thing that comes to mind with the fluid out of the tailpipes, check to see if the coolant is bubbling in the radiator, pull the radiator cap (engine cold) and start & run the engine, watch to see if it bubbles, run it until warm, this is to check for a possible head gasket leak, also did any of the “clean” spark plugs look really clean like steam cleaned clean ? Also points to a bad head gasket. Let us know how you do ! Enquiring minds and all that ya know.

[gltriker]

Regarding the float valve set inspection
Nope wasn't me, tlbranth is the man to give credit to.
A very good Genuine Honda replacement set source I have bought items from is this seller on ebay.
Yes, they are expensive . Not more than list price though.
With free shipping and this fellow actually holds all of the Genuine OEM Honda parts he sells in his inventory, I feel this guy is the best online source.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/320968322435

[redglbx]

Not as cheap as some of the aftermarket junk, but for oe Honda that’s a good price! Now I have used Sudco brand valves with good success and have been told that they are the people who make the oe valves but can’t say 100% that it’s true, but I have used them with no problems, and they are a little cheaper.

Cheap is not good on this part, I have had the cheap Chinese/Taiwanese/Korean/whatever’s, actually not fit the seats and had the chrome peel off after a bit of time which caused all kinds of problems. Had different angles on the seat and valve tips so they don’t match, they just leak 1