The bike is a 73 FLH. I've only had it since July. It appears to be all stock. The mufflers are turn outs, so I assume that there baffled, sounds like it. Here are the symptoms. The bike goes flat in fourth gear under load. OK on a level stretch. Happens at around 65. Also, it's spitting fuel out of the carb when it does it. It has an S&S Super E carb. I've tried a lot of things to try to figure it out. First, the timing appears to be dead on. I set it with a light. New Ultima electronic ignition. The carb appears to be pretty clean. I changed and adjusted the float, the float seat and tried a number of different jet combinations, to include the air bleed. It got a little better with some of the combinations, but I think that was just masking the problem a little. I put new intake seals on it (the O-rings). Checked it by spraying brake cleaner around the manifold and it didn't appear to be leaking. I adjusted the pushrods. I actually took them out and the hydraulic lifters and cleaned those. I couldn't get the intake rod of the rear cylinder out. I started to suspect a valve problem, so I just did a compression test. It was good. The front was 114 and the rear was 112. When I took the plugs out for that, the electrode on the front plug was dark and on the rear plug it was almost white. Any ideas on this? I've run out of them. Thanks.

 

Try new plugs or swap the two you have to see if the dark color stays on front cylinder.
If one cylinder is truly running richer than the other, you either have an intake leak, or a valve problem.
Carb spitting fuel also not normal so you have some possibly unrelated issue there.

 

Yes, but if it was a valve problem, wouldn't the compression test show that? That might be a stupid question, but I'm still dealing with the learning curve on this. The last time that I had a shovelhead was 30 years ago and it ran great.

 

When you adjusted the valves, did you go right from one valve to the next? It's helpful to adjust one valve, get the next valve in position and wait a half hour or so to make sure the lifter is completely bled down. Then the same for the next two.
Like LostinNM says, gotta be an intake leak or valve issue and with gas spitting out the carb, I'd lean towards the valve issue. Also, you should've been able to get the rear intake pushrod out.

 

That is not my method...but, it makes sense if you wanna kinda go by the Book.

Unless the valve is really Badly sunk, or even a bad Seat!!
Then...The pushrod may not ever get short enough...Same like putting the pushrods in the wrong location...[wrong length]
Never had a Valve seat go Bad, but I'm wondering what the Symptoms might be??

Edit; going by memory here...but Isn't the rear intake [supposed to be] the shortest??

 

dont forget when you unadjust a hyd lifter if its on the base circle, and the lifter block happens to be still full of oil, the hyd portion will draw oil into and under the two pieces, causing a hyd lock to happen Hence the pushrod wont want to come out .and apears to be the incorrect length

 

What do you do when that happens?

 

we take the lifter out take it apart and clean it and start over

 

If it's locked like that and you can't take the pushrod out, how do you get the lifter out. Do you have to take the head off?

 

turn the engine over ( by Hand ) to full lift on that valve and let it sit 1/2 hour the oil will return to the lifter block if you use the valve spring = then turn it around again to the bottom and if its still does not come out we use 12 inch needle nose plyers and pop it off the top of the lifter - then look at what you have and the location of all of it