77 GS550 won't start cold

[Steve Lowe]

It seems that I did not do a good enough job cleaning the carbs originally. My choke circuit was still plugged. I was fooled because I was able to blow air through from the pick-up pipe to the choke plunger. The catch is that I did not completely clean the inlet for the pick-up tube in the bowl. So even though the choke was working, it wasn't getting any fuel.

The bike starts great now on the choke. The next symptom is that cylinder #1 is running rich (even wet at start-up) where it wasn't before. At higher revs it runs ok but still rich on #1. I suspect that now that the choke is working, carb #1 is still choked when I turn off the choke.