A sneeze... what sounds like a mild backfire, is caused by a lean condition of one or more carburetors. A wrong idle air bleed installed, a leaking carburetor to intake manifold gasket leaking, a clogged fuel passageway, something on that order.

With the engine running and sneezing, stick two fingers into the carburetor throats. When the engine smooths out, you have found the offending carburetor.

On a flushette, the neutral idle should be, depending on the shaft length:

20" shaft = 1000 rpm

25" shaft = 1200 rpm

NOTE: Checking spark via using the spark plugs is a waste of time! The spark, with all plugs removed should jump a 7'16" gap with a strong blue lightning like flame... a real SNAP! Does it?

What is the actual compression psi of all the individual cylinders?

Please do not reply saying the spark is great and the compression is good or some such thing as this means nothing to us.

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(Spark Tester - Home Made)
(J. Reeves)

You can use a medium size philips screwdriver (#2 I believe) inserted into the spark plug boot spring connector, then hold the screwdriver shank approximately 7/16" away from the block to check the spark or build the following:

A spark tester can be made with a piece of 1x4 or 1x6, drive a few finishing nails through it, then bend the pointed ends at a right angle. You can then adjust the gap by simply twisting the nail(s). Solder a spark plug wire to one which you can connect to the spark plug boots, and a ground wire of some kind to the other to connect to the powerhead somewhere. Use small alligator clips on the other end of the wires to connect to ground and to the spark plug connector that exists inside of the rubber plug boot.

Using the above, one could easily build a spark tester whereas they could connect 2, 4, 6, or 8 cylinders all at one time. The ground nail being straight up, the others being bent, aimed at the ground nail. A typical 4 cylinder tester follows:

..........X1..........X2

.................X..(grd)

..........X3..........X4

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Awesome! will hunt down the carbs, had planned to take the apart and soak them due to the "sniffle"

I will recheck the compression, at one point, when i started....they all were between 88 and 96 i believe

i bought carb kits for this motor, could the wrong air bleed still be a possibility?

by sticking fingers into the carbs, am i pushing them at all or just placing them?

Thanks again!