GS850 is kinda smelly

[Guest]

Hey guys, so after working out some of my electrical gremlins and rebuilding my front brake calipers I've finally been able to ride my bike a little bit. It's a 1980 GS850, stock fuel/air/exhaust setup (to the best of my knowledge). It starts and runs great other than needing a little bit of warming up before taking off. Cleaning and synching my carbs is on my winter to do list this year.

I've noticed it's got a pretty strong smell from the exhaust. Very gassy smelling. Seems to get a little stronger once it's all warmed up and ridden a little (could be my imagination though). Just wondering if this is normal for this bike, or what should I be looking at adjusting if anything. Will the carbs being a bit dirty or out of sync cause it? Like I said, she runs pretty good. I have no complaints.

[tom203]

Carb cleaning might be calling earlier than you would like! Make sure you petcock is working correctly, but your bike is likely running too rich. Make sure "choke" fully turns off at carbs after warmup

[hannibal]

Cleaning isn't that difficult. You could probably knock it out in 4 days, maybe faster if you can dip more than one carb at a time.

[Cipher]

Maybe you have dumped a lot of fuel into the pipes in your efforts to clean and get things sorted.
Take it for an hours drive on a hot day and see if things burn away.

[GSinNH]

I have an extra bank of carbs sitting on my 79 parts bike. Maybe I'll pull those off and start tearing them down. Then I can just take some time one evening to swap the banks out. I don't think it's the choke staying engaged but I'll look into that as well.

Will take it for a longer ride this weekend. It's only 20 min to work 1 way and that's all I've been riding it since I got her going, just to commute for the past 2 weeks.

[nejeff]

I have an extra bank of carbs sitting on my 79 parts bike. Maybe I'll pull those off and start tearing them down. Then I can just take some time one evening to swap the banks out. I don't think it's the choke staying engaged but I'll look into that as well.

Will take it for a longer ride this weekend. It's only 20 min to work 1 way and that's all I've been riding it since I got her going, just to commute for the past 2 weeks.

Different carbs, that won't work

[TxGSrider]

You may want to be sure the choke rod is sliding all the way closed.

[Joe Garfield]

Would it make sense to check the plugs for any cylinders that look particularly rich? Or sync the carbs (even though they haven't been cleaned yet)?

My '82 1100 reeks like gas, too, mostly from the pipes. I think it has to do with not syncing the carbs yet and having one or two potentially rich cylinders. I also think there's a small leak in one of my carbs, despite being clean. I'm just trying to give examples of stuff to check or be aware of...

[OldVet66]

I would rebuild the carburetors and have done with it. The carbs on the '79 are VM carburetors and will not work on the '80. I just rebuilt the VM's on mine recently and two carburetor bodies and bowls fit in a gallon of carburetor cleaner with the parts basket. I'm not sure but you should be able to fit two CV carburetors in the bucket, I get the impression they are smaller than the VM's, I might be wrong. That makes it a two to three day project, 24 hour soak for each pair adjusting and syncing. I have had real good luck with the NAPA carburetor cleaner. My bike used to smell like gas in the garage all the time. I thought it was because of the pods and evaporation, but I was wrong. I used the torque specs for the bowls, but found when I took them apart that they seemed like they were not very tight. It may have had something to do with the aftermarket gaskets from Z1. This time around I ignored the specs and applied more torque. I think the S.S. bowl bolts I have are stronger than stock screws. It worked out nicely. There is no smell of gas now. I used to get three days between starts, then it would get difficult until the bowls filled again. Now it doesn't matter, it starts first spin more than a week between starts and the enrichment circuit works perfectly. The only thing I can figure is that the bowls leaked but evaporated before you saw anything. The rebuild was prompted because the enrichment circuit failed on the two uphill carburetors on the kickstand 3&4.