For reference, I picked up my '02 883 back in February, it wasn't running at the time. Ended up needed a new crank position sensor and I was in business. Bike has a lot of neglect from previous owner. They removed the stock baffles, and never re-jetted or tuned the carb, so it's been running lean and farting nonstop.

Currently running a 170 main jet, and 42 pilot jet. I have few larger pilot jets in the mail. In the meantime I wanted to adjust the idle mixture screw to further alleviate popping on decel and the occasionally carb farts. Idle mix screw still had the cap on, so I'm assuming it's never been touched. I've done carb work before, so to start I wanted to set the idle mix screw to soft seat, counting turns down to see where it was at. Here's where it gets weird: I'm pretty certain the idle mix screw already was at soft seat. I tried screwing it in and it felt super tight, I didn't want to strip the screw or the threads, so I backed it out 1 full turn, and back in: same thing, soft seat. So I backed it out 1.5 turns, and the bike idles way better, farts are gone, popping on decal is gone. No black smoke when revving, so I'm assuming it isn't too rich. Going on a 100 mile ride tomorrow, should get a better feel for it then, and be able to see what the spark plugs think about it.

Has anyone ever heard of an idle mixture screw being bottomed out stock? I thought stock has them at 1.75 turns out? My other thought is maybe the threads have lots of gunk in them, making it feel like it's bottomed out when it isn't. Either way, I've been sitting on a carb rebuild kit, so I think I'm going to pull the carb and the ix screw to see what's going on. Thought I'd post here and see if anyone else has come across something like this?

 

Did you hit the adjustment screw head with the drill bit when drilling out the plug? If so, that would spin the screw in to bottom it out. Might be the reason you found it bottomed out. YD