C15 starting difficulty

[stevepoulton]

 My C15 is very hard to kickstart.  It has an AMAL 375 carb with a tickler no choke/strangler with a tube from the carb to a disc air cleaner inside the battery box.  Is there any choke or strangler I can fit to restrict the air supply to improve starting

[AWJDThumper]

The tickler is the cold starting device on the AMAL carb - a choke is there to make warming up the engine a little easier. Difficult starting could be due to a number of things but I'd start to cleaning out the carb and blowing though the passageways and the jets. From memory, I think the pilot air mixture screw should be screwed out about 1.5 turns as a starting point. In terms of initial starting, it is just the pilot jet and its air passageway that matter.

[ducati2242]

when I first tried to start my newly rebuilt db34 I must have kicked it over 200 times before I got it going . Now , after standing over a week , it starts first kick . Not because I changed anything I just learnt how to do it . So if everything is correct , clean pilot jet as said and timing good , there's probably a knack to it .