The other tang on the floats - the little one

When I was working on my 82 xj650j and going back and checking the setting on my floats I noticed the little tab that is about a 1/4 inch to the side of the tang. It's much smaller. Two of mine look to be bent differently than the others. The question is, what should it look like? Should it be perpendicular to the bracket that it sticks up from? Or at an angle? I think it's meant to keep the float from going up too high - but I'm not sure. Just wondering because I haven't gotten the bike running perfect as of yet and I have the whole shopping list of stuff I have to do, but I'm wondering if maybe they are a factor too, although I've never seen them mentioned in any of the threads on here.
thanks gents,
Scott

 

They are a factor.

Those are the DOWN stop; the float goes up when it activates the needle valve. If the float bowl gets drained, those tangs are what stop the float's downward travel. Mis-adjusted, the float will go "over-center" and the needle will hang up. Their position isn't as measurably critical as the float level (shutoff point) but they are important in that they prevent the needle from getting stuck in the down/fully open position.

The fact that you had "up" and "down" mixed up reveals that you're dry-setting. Fine and dandy, but they still need to be wet-set.

 

No Fitz, actually I'm wet setting. But being an 82 I think this bike has probably had it's carbs apart 20 times by 20 different people. This is the 2nd time I'm doing the wet set but I didn't notice those stops the first time, and didn't do a thorough job of getting the bike running really well anyway. So here we go again doing it right - valve clearance too. So, should these stops be perpendicular to the bottom of the float? Or a lesser angle? Or should I just judge it by looking at the valve to make sure it doesn't come down too far when the float is resting on that stop?
Thanks for the help. I've got plenty of other work to do before I put everything back together but want to make sure I get those stops right this time.

 

The best practice is to carefully observe the operation of the float in relation to the tip of the valve and ensure that the float can't drop down far enough for the tip of the valve to go "over center" and bind up.

There's no hard and fast set spec for those, just that the float shouldn't drop too far.

 

Got it. Thanks much. To tell you the truth I think this might have been one of several issues that I was dealing with here because in addition to losing spark which turned out to be a bad battery, it was intermittently flooding too. I'll know in a few hours. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.