Hawk 250 fuel boiling/vapor locking.

[Megadan]

Took my Hawk out for the longest ride yet, a good solid hour or so of non stop running around randomly. Thought I had the idle set good, and then suddenly my idle started dipping at lights to 1k rpm or less. Blip the throttle and it would respond immediately. Ride it for a bit, come to a stop, idle back to normal...then it dips again. If I sat at idle without feathering the throttle long enough it would stall. But would start right back up.

I experimented with the idle speed, but I would either get 1krpm or less or 2k and wavering. Completely different to how it would run after warming up for 10 minutes or so of riding, which would always be nice and steady.

Well, after parking the bike I decided to inspect a couple of things. and see if there was any obvious causes. Nothing jumped out at me with exception to when I looked at my fuel line and filter. I installed a clear fuel line and a small fuel filter from the parts store, and this made me glad I did. The fuel line was mostly "air" with only a smidgen of fuel to be found.

I thought that was strange, so I opened the petcock with the bike sitting on a jack stand on the right side, and fuel flooded in and filled the bowl, which then started to bubble bubble boil and trouble through the line and fill it all back up again with gas vapor.

Does anybody else have this type of problem? The proximity of the carb bowl to the head AND the exhaust with the insanely hot cat in it is kind of...bad. I would rather not waste my exhaust wrap on the stock exhaust, so I am thinking about using some of that gold heat reflective foil I bought and sticking it to the bowl to see if it helps. It will look a little goofy with a gold fuel bowl, but I have always been a form over function kind of guy. The bowl is hot enough that you can't really touch it after shutting off the bike, so it will definitely help.