I had this exact problem....

Manual tells you to tighten the friction **** but I just couldn't get it to work for any length of time. I finally went to the stealer and picked up a new choke cable assembly. They had them in stock so I assume it must be a common problem. Upon taking the old one out, I found that the plastic friction **** had a hairline crack in it, preventing it from being tightened down properly. After changing the cable assembly, it works perfectly. To change the cable means removing the A/C and carb, so give yourself an hour or 2 to do the job.

 

BTW... you can get a fuel injection kit (thousands of $), but the $15 fix is the more economical way to go by far.

 

17 mm huh. Sure are a lot of metric parts on this "American" Iron Horse.

My enricher cable is behaving again. Makes for an easier morning start up.

I hear if you go to a #48 jet, this whole enricher thing goes away. Rumor is the Sportsters are set up very lean for epa reasons and they run better a tad richer.

 

I have the same problem after replacing my intake seals...I just kind of learned to accept it as just another pain in the ***, but I will try actually fixing it...thanks for bringing it up. What year is your Sporty, Broken Leg? I would like to try the #48 jet thing...I have a 96...

 

oh,I just read up a couple of posts...a 91

 

fringing, darn, cheap peace O' crap choke assembly. I spent the past hour trying to tighten up this thing and I have come to the conclusion that something isn't right. Mainly the reject who designed it and his boss who thought it was acceptable. At least I didn't break it, but the adjustment **** looks like hell.

 

Well at least I aint the only one. You think after 100 years of building bikes they could figure out how to keep a simple choke open. How hard can it be? Why the heck would they make it out of plastic?

If a new cable is only $15, then I guess that's not so bad. In the mean time I have taken to keeping a cloths pin in my jacket, an idea I got from an earlier post in this thread.

I thought about fabricating a small bracket on a hinge to hold the choke open. Then all you have to do to close the choke is lift up on the hinge.

 

I'm just wondering if I will eventually have the same problem with a new cable. Maybe the permanent fix is a Mikuni carb.

 

Unfortunately, all of the cables on a bike eventually gum up and need replacing or cleaning. The part that is plastic on the enricher is like a bushing, I guess. It is meant to constrict the cable movement in an adjustable way.

Num nut idea compared to a REAL rubber bushing, compressed by a locking nut. Probably saves $0.15.

Gotta face it, though. There are num nuts deep in the Harley organization. Maybe at the top, actually. Sometimes they must force their num nut penny pinching ideas onto the real designers.

How else would they put out an 07 Fatboy with an offset front wheel, just for example? [:-]

The enricher itself is a good idea, I think. It's NOT a choke. It adds fuel instead of restricting air.

 

That being said gives me a thought. There has to be somebody else out there that realised this was a stupid-a$$ design. Is there any after-market parts that actually do it correctly with a rubber bushing instead of plastic?