The deal with reading plugs is this: it's impossible on used plugs. And it
nearly impossible to do twice with the same set of plugs.
The area of the porcelain you are interested in is at the very,very base of the plug; not the tip at the electrode. If you have any amount of idle or ride time on a plug it contaminates the plug. If you are seriously lean than you can get trustworthy readings since there was never a fuel/heat signature to begin with, but that's rare and not really even a good idea anyway.
The deal is, you can fiddle around with your current plugs and get them darn good and close. After that a fresh set of plugs and a WOT plug chop is the only way to know for sure. And get a flash light and read the base of the plug. That tip is misleading. It will most always read leaner than the base, which won't hurt the engine or affect power that much, but you will be running a tad rich.
The tip of the porcelain is the area to look for "specks", or signs of detonation/preignition, but it's not going to show you your fuel ring.
Here is a good article on plug reading, but I don't agree with it completely. Reading the base of the threads for fuel is ok at the track, but it's nearly impossible to do in this scenario ,unless you are don't mind pushing your bike to the nearest straight-stretch. ANY driving or idle time totally contaminates that area, so you can just consider that area a wash for what we are doing here.
I know this is not the popular opinion on this subject, but the TRUE area to read a/f on a plug is right here,and right here only.
Which is why
this product exists. One thing to keep in mind is that while being fat will affect peak HP, it won't hardly affect peak torque whatsoever. As long as your not overly rich you won't have any problems with fuel-wash or lack of seat of the pants performance.
Our saying at the track was: "Lean is mean, fat is happy." It's really hard to hurt an engine by running a little rich.
Also, you'll never get a set of carbs tuned to perform perfectly under all conditions. If you leave your house and , let's say it's 60*F with whatever %/humidity, by the time it warms up and the humidity rises, you'll need a different state of tune to be ''perfect'', so don't kill yourself searching for a perfect tune on a carburetor fed, real world-driven vehicle. It'll never happen. It's why fuel injection exists.
That last pic of your plugs looks fine to me. Sure, they might be a tad fat, but they're definitely not bad at all. Personally, I'd say they are just fine. If you take off one day and it gets cold and you end up in some higher elevation areas those plugs will look totally different.
Feb 01, 2014; 2:39am
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