Carbs are good again! (not food related)

[Canada Dan]

Fired the bike up this spring and fuel was pouring out of a couple of the carb drains. Ordered new bowl gaskets, needle valves and seats (ouch - pricey little buggers)

Installed them tonight and all is well now. The old needles and seats look fine to me though...the only difference is the springs in the new needle valves seem slightly stronger.

Hopefully it still fine in the morning, I've had the carbs apart for a week or so and I'm not sure if maybe the problem was saturated floats and the time out of the fuel has allowed them to dry out. Anyone ever heard of this happening? They didn't seem lighter tonight then when I removed them last week.

[chef1366]

Oops sorry, wrong thread:-|

[Nightmare]

From what i've read, the mikuni OEM floats are pretty good against saturation, you can always test the floats by putting them into a container full of gas and seeing if they actually float.

Make sure you double check your float height to ensure that the new valves and seats are the same as the originals.

[Canada Dan]

I evidently spoke too soon - now the bikes got a flat spot around 3500rpm, gone is the snap your head back grin inducing surge of power...

Funny you should mention about checking the old floats and seats against the new ones - I'm afraid I was so keen to get them in that I didn't take the time to look. I guess that'll be my next move.

I should have kept my thoughts to myself last summer when I was going on about how problem free this bike has been!

Oh well - back to the wrenches.

I read elsewhere in the tech section about using duct tape on the back of the brake pads to stop squeal so I tried it - works like a damn!

[Dave8338]

Flat spot... recheck all your clamps and fittings on the AIR side of the equation. If this problem just started after the float bowl project and you have good "head Snap \\/ " on WOT, you are taking in air somewhere at the fittings/airbox. Won't effect idle quality unless it is severe and won't effect WOT position either. Flat midrange....95% of the time is an air leak.

[Canada Dan]

Thanks for the tip Dave - I did find one of the clamps for carb #3 (carb to airbox) buckled up a bit and replaced it with a new one. The tab that slides underneath was bent up and bound itself against the flat bit the screw goes through.

Still not running right though.

I found the fuel line at the petcock was not sealing well and replaced the original clamp with a new hose clamp. Still flat.

Removed the fuel tank and petcock assembly and flushed the tank - some debris in there and on the screen and refilled with fresh fuel. Still flat.

Pulled the plugs after a blast down the highway and all were nice and gray except #2 - it was black...

Any thoughts?

I stuck the plug back in its plug wire and cranked it over - lots of spark, tried it in #1's wire and the spark is identical.

Thanks in advance for any advice all.

[SqDancerLynn1]

#2 bad with slide carbs would guess the float level is too high. Petcock hooks to #3 carb

[Canada Dan]

Thanks for the advice, I ripped it apart again on Monday and found that the cap for the main jet had fallen into the float bowl on the #2 carb - all is well now!