Eliminating the vacuum on petcocks

[chuck hahn]

Some many moons ago someone ( Ed Ness maybe ) posted about how to remiove the vacuum feature and make petcocks simply manual ON / OFF. Anyone know that thread or have tutroial???

[Steve]

Don't have a link, but can't be much harder than removing the vacuum hose, then just turning the lever to PRIme.

The downside would be no REServe, but what the heck.

.

[chuck hahn]

Steve..bike is my 80 XS850 triple project. These petcocks are NLA and finding any NOS off Ebay is proving a worthy task. Fast forward to the K&L rebuild kits i put in less than a week ago. Leking pretty steady in the ON position, even more in the PRI position. Thus im wondering how to make them ON/OFF Manually. If they werent continuing to leak without the vacuum lines used I would be all set. But thats not happening. No vacuum and steadily dripping away.

[Steve]

Gotcha.

I was under the silly assumption that you were working on a GS.

Some day, I'm going to try to figure out why the success rate on petcock rebuilds is so low.

.

[fixmybrokecomputer]

Gotcha.

I was under the silly assumption that you were working on a GS.

Some day, I'm going to try to figure out why the success rate on petcock rebuilds is so low.

.

The success rate isn't any better on the Concours 1000. After hearing of all the failures here and on the COG forum, I just replaced with new OEM.

[Nessism]

It wasn't me that posted about converting petcocks. I did successfully rebuild the petcock on my KZ though. Kawasaki sells the OEM parts which makes all the difference.

[chuck hahn]

fixmybrokecomputeer....i foung one old stock petcock on Ebay for near 200 bucks nd this bike has 2 cocks. See why i would like to go manual?

[gsrick]

Well until you figure it out, just get an inline fuel shut off. I've been using the black and red plastic ones for years, but they do leak after awhile(a year or two), but I found this one that is made for motorcycles, well that's what it says. It may last longer and if you place it where it isn't hard to get to, but still out of sight, it makes a good anti theft device. It's a can also be an embarrassment device when you forget to turn it on before you ride away.

[jabcb]

An old forum topic on the conversion:

https://www.thegsresources.com/_forum/showthread.php?239970-Converting-a-vacuum-petcock-into-a-manual-petcock

There is another forum topic on the conversion that involves blocking off 1 of the 4 petcock body flow passages. Will post a link if I find it.


There is a conversion kit for the Kawasaki Concours. Don’t know if it fits any of the Suzuki petcocks.

https://www.murphskits.com/product_info.php?cPath=1_94&products_id=483&osCsid=mf0Id13EFEkZ6q6fyL7gY2

https://www.murphskits.com/docs/Manual%20Petcock%20conversion%20instructions.pdf

[jabcb]

Some years ago a Suzuki2Strokes forum member tried a rebuild kit on a GS1000 petcock. It still leaked & he figured out why.
Don’t know if there is some trick to correctly assemble the petcock that he wasn’t aware of, or if there was a problem with the kit he bought.


Details: http://www.suzuki2strokes.com/forum/...ic.php?t=11391

[jsandidge]

Steve..bike is my 80 XS850 triple project. These petcocks are NLA and finding any NOS off Ebay is proving a worthy task. Fast forward to the K&L rebuild kits i put in less than a week ago. Leking pretty steady in the ON position, even more in the PRI position. Thus im wondering how to make them ON/OFF Manually. If they werent continuing to leak without the vacuum lines used I would be all set. But thats not happening. No vacuum and steadily dripping away.

Chuck, I rebuilt the one in my 750 a couple years ago. It did leak at first. I replaced the spring behind the diaphragm with a stiffer one from the hardware store and it fixed the problem. The little o-ring on the plunger of the diaphragm wasn't seating in the housing.

[Nessism]

Polishing the O-ring seat may help. One of the big problems with the K&L kits though is that the parts are simply inferior to the originals.

[chuck hahn]

OK so I found this ( Googles great ). Im gonna give it a round and see what happens. Seems maybe if the handle channels and basic hole set up is the same on Zooky petcocks it may be of value for folks here.

http://www.yamahatriples.com/index.php/how_tos/vacuum-to-manual-conversion/

[salty_monk]

It was Tkent and you basically just file the stop off the front plate so that you can turn the lever all the way around (thus at one point you find a blocked off part).

Seems to work well for him - I tried it. Didn't work so well for me but it will slow it to a "slow drip"....

[chuck hahn]

The Tkent thing didnt work for me either Dan. BUT..I did the modification as shown on the Yamaha Triples forum I posted and sure enough PRI is now a positiove shut off. ON and RES remain as they were. Now to see the longevity of the mod.