will only run on full choke and dies on throttle

[fifer]

Hi all,
I am looking for a little reassurance that I am doing the right thing to get my 82 gs650gl back on the road. I had the bike running about 2 years ago and it sat for the past couple of years with gas in the carbs. I changed the oil then tried to fire her up. She stayed idling for a couple of minutes and then wanted to die out when I tried to give her some gas. I fired her up again and let it run for about 5 minutes on fulll choke and when I tried to ease her off the choke she died. I am running stock everything. I took off the carbs and cleaned the hell out of them which took me many hours. The jets were clogged on 2 of them and the others weren't the cleanest either. I also rebuilt the petcock and it works beautifully. I have a brand new battery and I have quit for the night and possibly for the weekend. I just wanted to make sure these are the things that I should be doing as I have read many posts leading me to believe that my jets were slogged and the carbs needed a good cleaning and why not do the petcock at the same time while I'm at it. Thanks for any feedback and I will post the results after I fire her up again.

[renobruce]

You are on the right track. The choke circuit works seperately from the other circuits, so it will run on choke and fail when you shut it off. Clean them, manually synch them, and it should start right up. set your air screws and do a good vacuum synch and you should be done.

[Blueandorangefish]

I'm glad you posted this because I'm having the identical problem with my bike and right now I'm only able to keep it off choke by increasing the idle, but I'm still having a huge loss of power issue. I've been wondering if my carbs were the problem.

[arveejay]

You've still got passages that are plugged. If you don't seperate them and clean each passage completely and verify they are clean, it will probably never run right. Your carbs are actually very easy to disassemble and clean if you have a decent tool selection. If you have a walmart tool selection your better off either buying quality screwdrivers or have someone else do it. Once you strip or break something there's no going back. It will be time to replace them.

[wiredgeorge]

Good info in this thread but a bit of confusion on the choke circuit. The choke has its own air supply and its own gas supply so it IS a stand alone circuit BUT the pilot system also is operating and supplying gas when you start the bike. The air/fuel mixture needs to be VERY rich at start up when the bike is cold and the bike CAN run only on the choke. When the choke is closed and you are running only on the pilot system, if either the pilot air jet or pilot jet or the passageways connecting them to the outside and each are obstructed or the jets themselves, the bike will die. The bike will ALSO die, when you take it off choke if the bike recently had POD style airfilters with no adjustment of the air/fuel mixture on MANY bikes. It is sometimes possible to warm the bike for a LONG TIME then take it off choke and it will run with the stock pilot jet and mixture screw setting but many times, it will just die as the bike really isn't fully warmed. You didn't mention your airbox and pipes type or if there had been any recent changes there. If there have not been, then remove your carbs and disassemble/dip and reassemble. Either swap pilot jets or clean the ones that are in the carburetors but they can sometimes be trickey to clean as spray carb cleaner MAY leave them partially obstructed as the pilot holes are pretty small in diameter. Don't poke things through the pilot jets if you can avoid it.