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Can these carbs be salvaged?
My sons and I bought a pretty decent 1978 GS550 last month. The bike ran and stopped, but had a rough-ish idle that would hang and hunt. Its my sons' first bike, and my third. Although I am not extremely mechanically-inclined, I think I bought this bike as much as for a tinkering hobby as I did to ride it. Although this is my first post, this site has been an amazing resource.
So far, we are having a blast going through the process of going through the basic maintenance steps. Even though the prior owner claimed to have done x,y, and z to to the bike while he had it, it quickly became obvious that most basic maintenance has been severely neglected for a long time. Working from the airbox, forward, we cleaned out the stock airbox, sourced an OEM filter, got some fresher-er rubber boots (airbox to carbs - I guess you cannot buy OEM anymore) and clamps. We got new intake boots/pipes (carb to manifold), new o-rings and hex screws from cycleorings.com, etc. We also began the process of checking valve clearance, but are waiting on some shims (ordered) to finish the job properly.
BUT... when we got into the carbs, we hit a roadblock. We started disassembly, and before we even started the cleaning process, we noted two areas of concern.
ISSUE #1: On #3, the overflow valve/tubes (pressed into the bottom of the float bowl) looks to be broken off right at the bottom of the inside of the float bowl. The PO had clogged the hole with some JBWeld??? or something similar.
ISSUE #2: On #4, the choke tube(starter jet) has been broken off at the base of the main carburetor body.
These do not look like easy issues to fix. Not only are the prior pieces stuck in the float bowl or carburetor body, it does not look like I can buy new replacements even if we could get them out. Should I frankenstein two bad components (ie take the good float bowl from #4 and pair it with #3 carburetor body (leaving #4 with a broken choke tube and overflow valve/tube)? If we do this, we could look for a full replacement for #4, but I am struggling to find one for sale... Maybe I am in over my head. Normal cleaning, and even re-jetting would have been fine... I am just not quite ready to drill out these little brass pieces or fab up some Macgyver-ish solution. Without trying to buy a whole new carb set, are there any other solutions that you guys have seen? I searched past posts, but did not quite find anything on-point. Any help/guidance is much appreciated!
So far, we are having a blast going through the process of going through the basic maintenance steps. Even though the prior owner claimed to have done x,y, and z to to the bike while he had it, it quickly became obvious that most basic maintenance has been severely neglected for a long time. Working from the airbox, forward, we cleaned out the stock airbox, sourced an OEM filter, got some fresher-er rubber boots (airbox to carbs - I guess you cannot buy OEM anymore) and clamps. We got new intake boots/pipes (carb to manifold), new o-rings and hex screws from cycleorings.com, etc. We also began the process of checking valve clearance, but are waiting on some shims (ordered) to finish the job properly.
BUT... when we got into the carbs, we hit a roadblock. We started disassembly, and before we even started the cleaning process, we noted two areas of concern.
ISSUE #1: On #3, the overflow valve/tubes (pressed into the bottom of the float bowl) looks to be broken off right at the bottom of the inside of the float bowl. The PO had clogged the hole with some JBWeld??? or something similar.
ISSUE #2: On #4, the choke tube(starter jet) has been broken off at the base of the main carburetor body.
These do not look like easy issues to fix. Not only are the prior pieces stuck in the float bowl or carburetor body, it does not look like I can buy new replacements even if we could get them out. Should I frankenstein two bad components (ie take the good float bowl from #4 and pair it with #3 carburetor body (leaving #4 with a broken choke tube and overflow valve/tube)? If we do this, we could look for a full replacement for #4, but I am struggling to find one for sale... Maybe I am in over my head. Normal cleaning, and even re-jetting would have been fine... I am just not quite ready to drill out these little brass pieces or fab up some Macgyver-ish solution. Without trying to buy a whole new carb set, are there any other solutions that you guys have seen? I searched past posts, but did not quite find anything on-point. Any help/guidance is much appreciated!
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