It wasn’t the carb. It was the piston. I had an overheat a while back, and the rings decided to stick themselves into the lands. I lifted the head, which was fine, and then pulled the cylinder. Once I got the cylinder off, I looked at the piston and thought, doggone it, it’s ringbound. I really did overheat the stupid thing.

The old Narda unit came back out and went to work for a while. Both rings sproinged loose, the lower after about 10 minutes, and the upper after about 30 minutes. The oil scraper was just nasty crunky. As the cylinder is clean and the piston is not damaged to the fingernail test, I’m simply going to wait for my gaskets and rings to arrive and will assemble it and check compression.

I am quite impressed that the oil scraper held 5bar. That is just awesome.

I remember when I was first confronted with Bosch K-Jetronic, the first functional and emissions-compliant mechanical fuel injection system. I was working on my Golf I Cabriolet, tearing it down for a cleanup, and realized that Bosch had simply taken a carb apart and scattered the parts around the engine bay. That was the primary reason K-Jet has always been super-confusing to people who only know EFI: they don’t know carbs.

I used to think I knew carbs.

This Mikuni is killing me. It has more jets than a four-barrel Holley. It has more vacuum hoses and little passageways than a 1970s Jag. Who came up with this thing? And why is it killing my poor Sherpa?

Which is still not running. Poor thing is trying to fire. It is trying so hard to fire. It almost ran last night. Today, I will tear out the pilot screw (the what?), which is the buried part that controls the idle air mixture. Why not just call it that? You know, the idle air mixture screw. Ugh.

Oh, well. Here goes nothing. At least now, I know how to get the carb in and out without killing myself.