GS650 Removing Carbs

[Guest]

Well this should be relatively easy but for the life of me, I can't seem to pull the carb off the engine side. I'm rocking / tilting the carb while pulling backwards, gently as to not damage the boots (which thus far, look rather decent..)

I could literally drag the bike backwards if I tried hard enough but I'm missing something on this carb removal. The air box clamps are loosened and seperated from the carb, there is space between the air box and carb bodies. I am not seeing where or what might be holding the carbs in. The previous owner said he had these off two years ago when he rebuilt them.. did he forget something?

I certainly don't want to pry with anything or cause damage to those boots so I'm jagging it in until I hear from the learned people of this board who have a lot of experience with this..

I'm enjoying this project.. one hurdle at a time

Cheers

[Shackleton]

hey, i just did this on my 650.. yeah its a mission, kinda twist and violently pull out the left side. i guess you've unscrewed the airbox off the frame.. two screws and a bolt..
getting all back together was about 20x harder.. good luck!

[chef1366]

If everything is off try a hairdryer to heat the boots.

[Charlie G]

It's been about 4 years since I did mine and I can't quite remember, but I think I rolled them down and then out. The air box needs to be loose. Everything needs to be loose. Their a B*tch. I would think it would be really hard unless it was at least 70f or 20c.


cg

[Seaking]

Thanks gents, I'll try the heat method tomorrow and a little more 'manliness' pull to see if they'll come off. Do you lubricate the boots to put them back on to make it easier?

The air box is disconnected and sitting loose, trapped in the frame behind the carbs.. I can understand why some people would want to put pods on their bike instead of dealing with this cramped spacing (I did read the articles why air box favoured over pods...)

Tomorrow is a new day.. no sense of trying to get these off in a frusrated mode bad things usually happen... ook ook

[Steve]

The trick is to get as much room as possible first.

I just got done doing this to an '82 650L (the bike is still in my garage).

Remove the plastic front half of the rear fender.
Remove (but do not disconnect) the rear brake reservoir.
Loosen the air filter box, slide it back as far as it will go.
Remove the manifold from the intake side of the carbs.
Pull the carbs out of the intake boots on the engine.
Rotate the carbs slightly (I rotated the tops rearward).
Slide carbs to the right, remove "choke" and throttle cables.

.

[nastyjones]

Those pesky clamps need to be really, really loose, almost falling off.

[kingjinx]

Definitely a bit*h to get off! to the point where i thought i was doing something wrong, i had to really reef on the carbs them to get them off the intake boots and when you put them back in do the heat method very helpful!!!!! or you will be there forever a very good tip if your choke cable seems stuck bend it at the end and she slides right out took me some time to figure that one lol good luck.

[Seaking]

Well I put my big boy boots on this morning and had at 'er.. and off comes the carbs.. no kidding, you reaaaally do have to hork on them to slide them off. But they are off.. and gooey sticky on the inside.. so a rebuild cleaning ect will be in order. Time to order the o-rings and what nots to get this cleaned up and back to running order.. shame previous owner didn't preserve his work before he put it away.. sigh

A quick look into the intake ports before bunging them up.. and hmm first time I've looked at that side of an engine before but shouldn't they be clean and shiny? Mine look like black scale or something coating the inside of the intake ports. Methinks I may be taking the head off to do some port cleaning, honing, new rings, lapping etc.. if I get that far.. this shoud be interesting to say the least.. I'll post queries about that in the appropriate forum section later on.

As I said before, this $300 bike is a learning project with hopes of getting a runner out of it by the time I'm done..

[tkent02]

A quick look into the intake ports before bunging them up.. and hmm first time I've looked at that side of an engine before but shouldn't they be clean and shiny? Mine look like black scale or something coating the inside of the intake ports. Methinks I may be taking the head off to do some port cleaning, honing, new rings, lapping etc.. if I get that far.. this shoud be interesting to say the least.. I'll post queries about that in the appropriate forum section later on.

As I said before, this $300 bike is a learning project with hopes of getting a runner out of it by the time I'm done..

No, it's just soot in there from when it backfires through the intake, usually on cold start. Soot hurts nothing, don't worry about it. You can clean if you are anal by injecting water into the engine while it runs, but it's a waste of time, the soot hurts nothing.

[Charlie G]

Glad to see you got them off. You've provided comedy relief for the engineer who designed the system. Now don't touch that head till you get it running and see what you've got! Be anal about cleaning the carbs, adjusting the valves, brake pads, lines and tires. OK, polish the paint and ally a bit.

cg

[Mr_Shamrock]

Yeah these are some of the harder carbs to get on and off. I have removed them from many bikes and not too many that I remember fought me like these. I ended up disconnecting the regulator from the bottom of the air box, taking off the brackets that the regulator bolts to, removing the 2 bolts for the rear brake master cylinder and pushing it out of the way, and then the air box can be twisted completely out of the frame if you hold your mouth just right and stand on one foot. It can be done though - me knows cuz me just did it. I then pushed the air box boots into the air box and the carbs slide right out (after twisting them out of the intakes). Now the fun part was getting the boots back through the box and back on to the carbs when I was done, but I did it. I would like to know how many hours the book pays to R&R these carbs. I think it took me close to 3, but will be quicker next time and yes with new intakes on there way the next time will be here real shortly - YUCK!

[Seaking]

Thanks for the info, folks. I thought the 4 carbs on my 2nd Gen Venture were hard to pop off, but wow, these were fun.. uh huh. I did have the rear of the bike stripped up to the air box (brake stuff off, battery stuff off, etc.) so lots of ample room to work with. I think the reaaaly fun part is to get all of it back on there lol.. Is there some form of lube you can put on the boots to aid in installation and later removal? Spit and a prayer?

I spoke with a mechanic buddy about this after I sent out my previous post and it is like you said... nothing to worry about. I do however have to get the gritty stuff out of there lest they get down past the valves. Not sure how sandy grit got these (it wasn't me!) but I do know enough not to let it get into the valves and further into the piston..

There is a way to clean them out easily while the engine is still intact that shouldn't take too long to do. so that will be one task to do.

Now armed with Carb Cleaner and a bunch of lengthy tutorials from Cliff's site, I feel prepared to take the cleaning task at hand (after reading and RE-re-reading the tutorials..)

I received an old twin carb setup from a local mechanic to play with, to familiarize myself with what to expect on the inside etc.. that helped a lot. I also took his carbs (it was a toss away set of carbs) and put it through the soda blast cabinet to clean the bodies and butterfly valves, bowls and such, just to see what it does. Once blasted, hot water washed and rinsed and air blasted the ports out. All the passages came out clean with the carb cleaner shots. So this would tell me the soda does clean out nicely from the passages afterwards and perhaps not do harm to the carbs since isn't abrisive enough to take any apart but the dirt and rust.. Nice and shiny..

But something tells me it shouldn't be all THAT easy. My lack of experience with carbs might be that I'm something obvious that it's not a good thing to do. I wanted to try it on a sacrifice carb before attempting it on my own.. thoughts?

Cheers and thanks for the great advice. Much appreciated, and heeded.

[Mr_Shamrock]

I would not use a soda blaster. I would be concerned with lodging some of the media in were it doesn't need to be. Soak them in carb cleaner and blow each passage out with compressed air (you will want eye protection on for sure). You can also run a thin piece of wire through each hole for the stubborn stuff. I just cut a piece of wire from a roll and strip a few inches off of one end and grab a strand at a time out of it. You want to take your time here (remember what a pain these were to remove and you will soon find out what a pain they are to reinstall). Blow through each passage and make sure the air is exiting where it needs to and that all 4 carbs have the same "sound" through each orifice - meaning if one carb has a strong hiss when you blow a passage out and the next one has a barely audible hiss than you know one has an issue. Usually the barely audible one is clogged somewhere. When you think they are clean get a can of carb cleaner with the straw attached and blow through each orifice (again make sure you have eye protection on). Watch to see that each carb passes the cleaner through the same hole and the amount coming through are the same. If you have ANY doubts start over and make sure they are all perfectly clean. I just did mine and now I am having an intake issue that I had my doubts about when I removed them the first time. My punishment is I get to R&R them again.

[Seaking]

Thanks for the sound advice! I ordered my o-ring kit and seals and will have a go at the carbs when everything is in place. I tried taking the intake boots off but once again, its treating me like a little wee lass where I can't turn the screws (yes, I will be getting the hex bolts for these, M6 x 1 x 16MM).. and the Harbour Freight impact hammer I recently purchased is basically the most useless of tools yet encountered. It couldn't turn a trick during fleet week at best.. gnawed the hell out of one screw.. And I do know how to use one as this was a primary tool when working on the CF101 Voodoos back in the early 80s..

Luckily for me, the guy who has me doing some soda blasting for him is also a machinist.. I can see a lot of time trading coming up in the near future..

A lot of work done tonight, sore knuckles, skinned fingers, dirt on my face.. I think this day has been seized.. and throttled.. Miller time!! Tomorrow is a ride day.. so until next time..

Cheers!