79 GS850 Carb questions

[lennymu]

The bike always ran okay\\/ , but she is old and I thought the carbs could use a rebuild. I purchased the o-ring kit from cycleorings.com and went to work on it. Cleaned the carbs in Berryman's dip (left in the dip for and hour) and sprayed them out with carb cleaner and blew dry. Problem number one; three of the pilot fuel screws broke in the carbs, got out the broken pieces but couldn't find new ones. Made my own and they are in and working.:-D Screws are set at 1 turn out for now. The pilot air screws are currently set at 1-1/4 out and idles okay, a bit lumpy I think. Funny thing, the air screws don't make much difference after rebuilding the carbs, I get small increases in rpm (200-300) but nothing more. The plugs look okay, but they don't have many miles on them yet. The inlet tubes have new o-rings installed and torqued, tried using ether to see if there are any vacuum leaks, found a few but tightening the carb clamps eliminated that.

[mark]

My understanding is that on the VM26's the air screws are a kind of "find tune" adjustment. Normal range is 1 and 1/4 to 1 and 3/4 turns out. My carbs are working good and I don't get much more of an RPM change than you describe.

That's great that you can make your own pilot screws.....that's WAY over my head or capability.

[lennymu]

Well that's a relief to hear. I was worried that I didn't get something clean enough or missed something. Thanks for the help.

One extra question though, in the slides, when I took the needles out, the spring was between the top of the slide and the bottom of the thin washer under the clip. Is this correct? every diagram that I look at shows the same, but doesn't look right. How are the needles controled with respect to height?

[mark]

I just raised my needles a few weeks ago, you do it by moving the e-clip or adding spacers. There are "notches" on the top of the needle for this purpose.

It sounds like your spring and e-clip parts are in the right place. The thicker plastic spacer should be on the top, followed by the e-clip, then the thin spacer, then the spring. When you screw it together the net effect should be to move the needle to one side a bit. In other words, if you hold it straight and let go, spring pressure should move it to one side.