Ok, leaky parts

[DieMonkeys]

Ok, so I'm guessing the trip back shook some things loose, so when I get home there's a puddle of gas under the bike when I try to start it. It looks like this thing here:



Had come loose from something and was dangling and dripping fuel down here:




And my mom's "boyfriend" or whatever he is now, being the super mechanic he is (duh, where's the kickstart? Back in the 50s all the bikes had kickstarts), attaches that hose to the battery drainoff hose, which may have caused other problems because I didn't realize it until this morning.

So, I've gone through my clymer's manual, and I havn't seen where that hose is supposed to go, yet. Any clues? I'm guessing it may have some reason as to why my bike won't start.

[DieMonkeys]

Oh, and this is all taken from the left side of the bike.

And the bike was running when I had it in VA.

It has about 15k miles on it if that helps.

[t3rmin]

That hose is supposed to dangle open like that. It's a vent hose from the airbox. If fuel is coming out of it, your carbs are leaking back into the airbox, perhaps due to misadjusted/stuck floats or something? You need to pull the carbs off and do a cleaning/rebuild/float adjustment.

And if you've gotten fuel in the battery I'm guessing you'll want to replace that as well...

[DieMonkeys]

Could the floats have gotten stuck during a bumpy ride?

The bike started up yesterday morning and the night before with no problems, but that was the short trip from DC to VA, the 500 mile trip home to SC was a bit bumpy.

But yay, I get to take the bike apart for the first time!

[t3rmin]

Who knows? ;-) They could be stuck or at the wrong height or your float valve seat o-ring(s) could be bad.

Pick up an o-ring set from www.cycleorings.com, float bowl gaskets from www.z1enterprises.com, 4 cans of spray carb cleaner and a "parts cleaner" dip bucket from the auto parts store. Then follow the directions here:

http://www.thegsresources.com/gs_carbrebuild.htm

[DieMonkeys]

I'm going to need to get a rebuild kit because I know it needs new jets. That was one of the problems the last guy had, someone had reamed out the old jets possibly while cleaning them with a needle.

[hwb120240]

The floats on my other Suzuki got stuck (2 out of 4) after I hit a very bad pothole. Allowed fuel to seep into the cylinders and then to the crankcase. Of course the Maddy has a fuel pump and just kept pushing fuel as long as the ignition was on. The GS seems to need a vacuum to free flow unless you are on prime so I doubt you have the fuel in the oil problem I had. Back to the floats: I freed mine by removing the bowl drail screws and shooting Berryman's B12 into the bowl with the straw. No more issues in the last 6 months.
Wayne

[DieMonkeys]

So where can I order a carb rebuild kit?

[t3rmin]

www.z1enterprises.com is my favorite.

[JayH]

Your picture didn't show a lot of the gas line from the tank back to the carbs but if you don't already have a inline gas filter installed on the bike take the time and do it now. The screen on the petcock does a good job of keeping large particles out of the carb but not the smaller ones.

[SqDancerLynn1]

Just make sure the tank is clean. A filter will restric fuel flow