Amal Premiers

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worntorn

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What a treat to remove the slides after 15,000 miles and have them look like this.
Also , the carb bodies look good. Instead of the vertically scored surface that occurs with all original Amal carb types, there are just some polished areas where contact is happening.
Jerry supplied these carbs to me a few years ago.
Seems to me they are the answer to carb problems/wear issues.




 
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very impressive, yet there are some that can not be convinced that the Premiers are nothing
like the concentrics of old.
 
Wow. 15,000 miles Glen? Original concentric would be worn out at that!

That’s impressive.

By the way, do you run air filters on those carbs?
 
Fast Eddie said:
Wow. 15,000 miles Glen? Original concentric would be worn out at that!

That’s impressive.

By the way, do you run air filters on those carbs?
Click to expand...

Could hardly believe the lack of wear at first, had to look at the slide with the magnifier. It looks the same with the magnifier, as new.
And both carbs look the same.

I do run airfilters, K&N pods.
Of course that didn't stop the old Concentrics from eating themselves.

Glen
 
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And for those that don't think they meter all the way and have no scope to cope with a tuned engine look at the Burlen website. the lower trace is from my 850 with the needle on the middle position, it could cope with a higher spec engine than mine.
There were some issues with teething / quality problems, but the pestering to Burlen now seems to working through the system.
 
Only issue I have with my new premiers is my fault...they are too rich at idle because of our 6400 ft altitude. I didn't think about that when I ordered them and should have asked for the 17 or maybe even a 15 idle jet rather than the 19 that came in them. How rich are they? Rich enough so that the Alton starter can spin/start the bike from cold with NO ticklers or enrichers. Anybody know if a pilot jet number is actually its measurement in thousandths? I might try the old shade tree "solder it up/re-drill" trick. Obviously I can order new pilot jets but since I am now in Mexico, odds are good I'd never see them.;)

Re that - I ordered the CNW Brembo MC bracket and decided to try shipping here. It was last seen (tracking) when it arrived in Mexico City on Dec 16. It hasn't yet made it the 170 miles from there to here and I'm thinking it never will. :(
 
Suggest you try at 6K feet the old Gunson’s Colourtune at night on a warm engine, trick, but don’t expect it to be right at sea level!!!!
 
worntorn
mine are similar but only around 7000 miles with usual K&N oval filter, vast improvement over the old Concentrics once set up and as madnorton says, can reliably handle a tuned street engine especially with velocity stacks and appropriate attention to detail in filter setup, porting, jetting and exhaust.
And they look great on their original manifolds, a perfect visual match for the bike.

MexicoMike
Gunsons Colortune mentioned by Berhard is great but old school tuning the idle screws to give the best running on each cylinder by ear my first choice.
Colortune only used on Yamaha CV Mikunis these days.
On my bike with #17 pilots it gets best, reliable idle within a 1/4 turn range (2.0turn max) and has cold started on choke from sea level to 7000+ feet in the Alps no problems.
Col du Petit St Bernard pass rather than Bernhard....
I parked my bike by the grassy hump across that little creek and did a four hour walk.
https://www.dangerousroads.org/europe/france/3596-col-du-petit-saint-bernard.html
 
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Well, I don't have a ColorTune so I'm just tuning the old-fashioned way as you mentioned - by ear, one cylinder at a time.

FWIW 6400 feet is where the bike lives and most of our rides go from that up to around 8600. Bike hasn't been below 6k since 2006. ;) So clearly I SHOULD have thought about that when I was in the US and ordered the Premiers and a selection of pilot jets. I do have leaner needle jets and mains but didn't think about idle...:(
 
MexicoMike
if you haven,t done it already, try lowering the float levels with float down at the front to lean across the range although this may affect your leaner mains and needles.
I thought if you tune the idle by ear to what the engine likes at any local altitude, the mixture is right.
 
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Back in the hay day of carburetors, the Amal engineers were among the best, better than Mikuni in my opinion. The bean counters, not the engineers dictated the switch to zinc slides which, unlike the earlier chromed brass slides, were incompatible with the zinc bodies. Dissimilar metals/hardnesses, properly selected, can have
natural lubricity. Zinc on zinc was a flat stupid corporatist bungle that helped wreck the British MC industry.
 
Oh, I'm referring to the bad old ones which xbackslider says are made of zinc.
This surprised me as I had always thought them to be of aluminum, don't know why.

Glen
 
I have a pair of low mileage Amal non premier. The slides are torn up along the top. Common of course. The rest of the carb looks nearly
brand new. My premiums look great including the slide.
Seems the dissimilar metal thing is seriously important.
...that's science for you!
 
worntorn said:
Oh, I'm referring to the bad old ones which xbackslider says are made of zinc.
This surprised me as I had always thought them to be of aluminum, don't know why.

Glen
Click to expand...

The old ones are made of the same "alloy" as the body... with predicable results.

I added the anodized slides to my original carbs and they seem to work great.
 
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