Carb Icing question

[Stu99]

Hi All,

My carb warming hoses are getting old and with a lot of taking the carbs on and off for carb mods and tuning the hoses are getting a bit iffy for sealing properly on the carbs.
As these hoses are no longer available(genuine) I am considering plugging them and doing without the warming circuit(as I have seen you FCR users do). I still have some carb tuning to do(dyno on Monday to check progress) and the hoses are becoming a nuisance.

I have read all the old threads on carb icing but was still curious about a couple things.

Am I right to think carb icing is really only an issue for you lot in the colder parts of the northern hemisphere?
I'm in Melbourne, Australia so although it gets cold, we are not talking snow and the extremes you guys/gals have to endure.

Should I be concerned about carb icing without the warming circuit?

Thanks,
Stu

[Mincehead]

Plug em, you`ll never get carb icing there in relatively sunny all year round Aus.

[SDN]

Hi MH and others form scotlandshire running FCR's, do you ever get carb icing? and if you do what do you do?

Put a candle in it as it is icing?

Well seriously now, have you ever had the problem?

[Stu99]

Plug em, you`ll never get carb icing there in relatively sunny all year round Aus.

Thanks mate, that's what I thought, but thought it was worth asking those more knowledgeable than myself.
You know what they say about assumption being the mother of all f#%kups.

[Mincehead]

When I bought my TRX and rode it home over 300 miles in January, there was snow and sleet on the higher ground, even then I didn`t suffer carb icing.

[dandywarhol]

Carb icing is a phenomenen due to water in the air more than the temperature being cold.

As the atomised fuel vapourises it draws heat from the surroundings, including the water in the incoming air. Result? remove heat from water and you get ice. It's helped by the temperature being lower but it doesn't have to be freezing.

I've seen iceballs the size of a fist in car carb inlets in the correct conditions - usually when someone's fitted aftermarket filter pods. Iceballs in the inlets will stall the engine in the right conditions - a police biker died around 20 years ago when his Kawasaki iceballed in Englandshire - then Kawasaki fitted carb heaters as standard equipment.

[Mincehead]

Was that on the GPZ900`s? I know the early ones were bastids for it.

[dandywarhol]

Think it was Mince..................

[Con Rod]

if you decided to replace the hoses you can just get a lenght of 5mm hose and use that. I replaced the hoses on mine in January with 5mm hose, without issue

[fung]

IMHO keep it all std with hoses in situ.
this allows for mixture stability.
cheers
fung
"rr"

[JL]

Just to throw my experience into the mix - when I cleaned my stock carbs, the heater hoses were blocked so badly with crud that I needed to run wire through them as even compressed air could not dislodge the muck, so the circuit was essentially blocked. I now have fcrs and have just linked the circuit with a single hose. In neither instance did I or have I had any indication of carb icing.

[Stu99]

Thanks for your replies guys. Just the kind of info I was after.

Cheers,
Stu

[Stu99]

Result:
Bypassed the carb warmers and just looped the circuit with a single hose. No leaks, no worries and best of all I can keep popping the carbs on and off for tuning without obsessing about coolant leaks from the carb warmers every time.