365 X-Torq Repair and Questions

I may have rebuilt a few dozen manual transmissions over the years. I also design machines with gearboxes in my day job. Nothing in this that turned out to be very unfamiliar.

 

Good for you - fun to work on these machines for sure - I'm certain you enjoyed the project - hope it runs well and changing to 372 not a big deal if you decide to later. Did you put new rings (can't remember if you mentioned that). Cheers!

 

I checked the rings against factory specs and found basically zero wear. So I left them in. Maybe that was dumb.

 

Ok, so it started up just fine and seems to idle well. I then studied the carb tuning process in more detail and I'm getting nervous - one person mentions that if I get the high adjust too lean I'll ruin the piston. And another says the high RPM will be coil limited making it harder to find the right high setting. Finally, the EPA limiters need to be defeated to get more than 1/2 turn of adjustment.

I can see how to defeat the limiters but if the tuning is so touchy then it's probably a bad thing for a rank beginner. With tachs costing $100+ I'm not in a rush to buy that for a single use. Can anyone detail the process a bit?

It would be great to have a local pro for this.

 

Tune it rich enough to get a noticeable blubber and then lean it back out to where you here have a blubber and when it hits wood it cleans up.

 

So it's true that I need to lean out very very slowly to avoid melting the piston?

 

Yeah you can smear it in a couple minutes if it's too lean. You can get an unlimited coil and get rid of the limited one and be able to tune by ear easier.