I received new pushrods on Wednesday, July 16 at 9:00 PM. The courier driver said he wouldn't have been in my area until 5:00 PM, but I guess my bitching to Fed-Ex paid off, he got the message, I got my package in the morning!
It tuned out that the old pushrods were too short and not too long. Luckily, the Smith Brothers ones were about a 1/16" longer, and with a tulip shaped upper cup, they looked fine. I had the bike back together and running by 10:30, loaded everything up and made the ferry to New Brunswick at 4:00. I left the fairing behind so I could sort things out with the open bike. Thursday was just a tech inspection day at Loring, but as I am one of the inspectors, I try to get there on time.
First runs Friday afternoon were disappointing, as we kept bogging down before we got to the mile. That night it dawned on me that some dummy had lowered the float level because the carb was flooding last fall on a dyno session. We raised the float level and installed a new battery for good measure and started to get some results. Our best run Saturday was 128 mph.
We made a timing change and a jetting change on Sunday morning but started bogging down again. Subsequent jetting changes did nothing, so I again changed the float level and we got one last run in at noon of 130.38 mph at the 1-1/2 mile. Bonneville should be interesting!
Tom