Lots of gunk in the carbs

[Guest]

Wow, so about a week ago I installed a new petcock 'cause my old one, the original, had finally given up the ghost -- gas was going into the carbs and just leaking out pretty badly.

Anyway, swapped out the petcock and no more gas leak. Yay!

But then, the rest of the week, the bike ran pretty poorly - bogging down and so forth. So, I should have figured this, but I decided to tear into the carbs, which I just rebuilt and cleaned last year.

Long story short, when I opened up the number one carb I found all sorts of tiny bits of rubber, including quite bit on that little screen on the needle valve seat. Is that the right term?

Anyway, I'm guessing it was pieces of the seals from the old petcock that broke up and got into the carbs that was causing my problem, since it felt as though I just wasn't getting a good fuel flow. Does that sound reasonable?

I only just got into carb number one today before I had to break. But I'll be cleaning out the other three tomorrow. I'm guessing it was all this gunk in my carbs that was causing the bogging all this past week.

My tank looks pretty clean. But just in case, I'm planning to install an inline fuel filter when I re-intstall the carbs.

[Nessism]

I doubt the debris is from the petcock, most likely the tank. A filter is better than nothing but it's a band-aid at best - the proper fix is to clean out the tank. Also, cleaning the carbs is more involved than simply taking off the float bowl and spritzing them out with some spray cleaner. A proper carb cleaning involves fully breaking down the carbs, soaking the parts in carb dip, and then reassembling everything with new O-rings with a kit from cycleoring.com. Short cuts are long cuts when it comes to this sort of stuff so please do it right unless you want to do the job more than once.

[tkent02]

Bits of rubber from the tank?
The only rubber is in the filler cap or the petcock, and the gasket around the sender...

[oldgsfan]

I doubt the debris is from the petcock, most likely the tank. A filter is better than nothing but it's a band-aid at best - the proper fix is to clean out the tank. Also, cleaning the carbs is more involved than simply taking off the float bowl and spritzing them out with some spray cleaner. A proper carb cleaning involves fully breaking down the carbs, soaking the parts in carb dip, and then reassembling everything with new O-rings with a kit from cycleoring.com. Short cuts are long cuts when it comes to this sort of stuff so please do it right unless you want to do the job more than once.

I agree. But I did the total tear down with new o-rings and the full on dip just last year. It took me more than a week 'cause I did each carb seperately.

I giess I thought just a blow out is OK 'cause I'm not dealing with much build up, but rather lots of little bits of rubber.

But, I don't know, how often should someone tear apart their carbs and give all the parts a dip?

[tkent02]

But, I don't know, how often should someone tear apart their carbs and give all the parts a dip?

Once when you buy the bike, never again as long as it is ridden regularly.

[Nessism]

I agree. But I did the total tear down with new o-rings and the full on dip just last year. It took me more than a week 'cause I did each carb seperately.

I giess I thought just a blow out is OK 'cause I'm not dealing with much build up, but rather lots of little bits of rubber.

But, I don't know, how often should someone tear apart their carbs and give all the parts a dip?

If you did it last year I'd go for the spritz out route with a couple of specific checks: remove the pilot jets and hold them up to a light to make sure they are open, and make sure the choke passages are open in the float bowl and up to the plungers. Regarding the grunge in the float screens, it could be from the petcock but I suggest you double check for grunge in the tank too.

[oldgsfan]

yeah, that seems like sound advice. I'm nearly done with spraying everything out.. i basically took the carbs completely apart and found bits of rubber in all four, some of them on the screen.

putting it all together again.

update: Got it all back together, did a bench sync and took it out for a short ride on the freeway. Bogging problem is gone, acceleration was smooth. It rode really well. I have a bit of a creeping idle, but otherwise no complaints. I've run out of time for a vacuum synch, but the bench synch seems to be good enough for a daily commute until another weekend. I ended up pulling out about a dozen seperate little pieces of black rubber, some of them as big as a pencil tip.

[bwringer]

I've seen similar rubber debris from rotted petcock innards before.