GS550ES Carb problems.

[MacGyver]

Check your choke plungers - removed them from the cables and see how well they slide in and out of the carbs. One of mine was getting stuck part way down causing my grief.
Some of my experience may help:

http://www.thegsresources.com/_forum/showthread.php?t=141950

[Danjal]

Check your choke plungers - removed them from the cables and see how well they slide in and out of the carbs. One of mine was getting stuck part way down causing my grief.
Some of my experience may help:
http://www.thegsresources.com/_forum...d.php?t=141950

Thanks, I'll recheck those too this weekend.

[Danjal]

Choke plungers are fine. I checked the manual though and found out I was missing an o ring where the thing mates up to the carbs. I'll slap on a cheapee rubber one from the haardware store and see if it helps. The plungers slide in just fine. Checked the choke cables with and without the cables attached and the plungers are good. Mic'ed em. Still no dice here. New carbs incoming as is a jet kit. I cant find anything on a dynojet kit parts list, much less instructions for one. Just to see if it was a fubar'ed install. Might as well start with good carbs and go from there.

[MacGyver]

Choke plungers are fine. I checked the manual though and found out I was missing an o ring where the thing mates up to the carbs. I'll slap on a cheapee rubber one from the haardware store and see if it helps. The plungers slide in just fine. Checked the choke cables with and without the cables attached and the plungers are good. Mic'ed em. Still no dice here. New carbs incoming as is a jet kit. I cant find anything on a dynojet kit parts list, much less instructions for one. Just to see if it was a fubar'ed install. Might as well start with good carbs and go from there.

New carbs sound like a good plan, jet kits gone bad seem to be common previous owner experiences. I would also recommend a ColorTune kit to help with jetting, check out the eBay seller Dominiomtools for the G4171 kit, this will save you a lot of time with fine tuning the jetting and idle mixture screws. Not cheap, but worth it in my humble opinion. I was happily dealing with a stock set up.

[Danjal]

Honestly I wouldnt mind dealing with a stock setup either... just the cost to buy new carbs and rejet them is much cheaper than getting a stock exhaust setup, air box, and some gaskets and o-rings.

What exactly does the color tune kit do?

In some sort of bitter irony the bike actually idled last night when a friend came to look at it.. absolutely nothing has changed from the last startup. But it refused to take throttle again... but idled perfectly at 1,200 RPM. Fired right up to boot. Rather annoying I tell ya, but it gives me time to fix the other minor things on it that need it. The rear tire on really close inspection has some weather cracks.. dosent appear to be dry rot, but im not taking the chance. Front tire is fone but im giving that one out to a friend who can use it since hes being an idiot and riding around on a dry rotted rear tire.. against loads of protest by his friends.

[MelodicMetalGod]

Honestly I wouldnt mind dealing with a stock setup either... just the cost to buy new carbs and rejet them is much cheaper than getting a stock exhaust setup, air box, and some gaskets and o-rings.

What exactly does the color tune kit do?

In some sort of bitter irony the bike actually idled last night when a friend came to look at it.. absolutely nothing has changed from the last startup. But it refused to take throttle again... but idled perfectly at 1,200 RPM. Fired right up to boot. Rather annoying I tell ya, but it gives me time to fix the other minor things on it that need it. The rear tire on really close inspection has some weather cracks.. dosent appear to be dry rot, but im not taking the chance. Front tire is fone but im giving that one out to a friend who can use it since hes being an idiot and riding around on a dry rotted rear tire.. against loads of protest by his friends.

If it's still refusing throttle it's still not getting the right mix when ya open it up. Going to a stock/known good carb setup will certainly help with the troubleshooting.

Good job on not taking chances on the old tires. It's just to easy and inexpensive to get good rubber on the rims.

As for giving your "done" front to your "idiot" friend with the rotted rear tire, well, "Friends don't let friends ride drunk...or on bad tires." Just put a nail or a knife in each and take up a collection among friends for new tires. If ya want ya can even make him pay it back over time. Just don't let him out 'o the barn to die b/c he was too complacent to invest $300 or less into new tires.

[Danjal]

Last time I had it started it was taking throttle up to 7500.. then fell flat on its face.

We're on him constantly about those tires. You can lead a horse to water..... Id rather just give him my old front thats literally in new shape without cracks than watch his old rear blow out on him down the road. His life is worth more to me than the price it costs me to replace a tire. Ironically hes not seeing it that way about buying his own. *shrugs* but this is an entire other rant to get into later on.

Forgot to ask above.. does anyone know where to get a carb synchronizer for cheap? The 4 clear glass tube tools. I'll see if I can find a picture of one again.

[MelodicMetalGod]

Last time I had it started it was taking throttle up to 7500.. then fell flat on its face.

We're on him constantly about those tires. You can lead a horse to water..... Id rather just give him my old front thats literally in new shape without cracks than watch his old rear blow out on him down the road. His life is worth more to me than the price it costs me to replace a tire. Ironically hes not seeing it that way about buying his own. *shrugs* but this is an entire other rant to get into later on.

Forgot to ask above.. does anyone know where to get a carb synchronizer for cheap? The 4 clear glass tube tools. I'll see if I can find a picture of one again.

The cheapest is to make your own. Search here on TheGSR and you'll find a couple folks that have posted up "how to's" on the matter.

The best/most convenient but also most expensive is the Carbtune tool. You can also find that in searches here.

Best of luck!

[MacGyver]

What exactly does the color tune kit do?

The ColorTune is a custom spark plug that has a clear window around the insulator to allow you to view into the combustion chamber. Specifically it allows you to see the colour of the of the detonation and tune the mixture for for proper Bunsen burner blue without having to rely on plug chops and other hit/miss techniques.

[Danjal]

Thats pretty slick.

Dynojet kit came in today. The needles are much thicker than the ones currently in the carbs. I havent read the instructions fully yet, but seems this set is botched pretty bad.

[Danjal]

Still weird.

New carbs are in as are the dynojets. Bike runs and idles amazing while cold. takes throttle the whole works. It just runs a bit rich. After warming up. We shut it down after about 5 mins. It dosent want to startup again, dosent want to run on the idle circuit or main circuit. Real headscratcher here. And it acts like its running lean.

Installed and cleans up a new set of carbs that were intampered with.
New stage 3 jet kit.
New intake o rings
New valves and seats

Checked and verified that-
Chokes are adjusted right
Throttle is adjusted right
Idle is adjusted
Checked for vac leaks
Timing is correct
Valves are fine
Floats are set to 1" for some reasonthey werent stopping the fuel correctly when first put in at the 1" height, but after running the bike and shutting it down on PRI its not leaking a drop. Getting an aquarium hose tomorrow to build a fuel gauge/tool.

Aw hell what else... If I can think of it i'll post it later.

Any ideas?

[Calvin Blackmore]

Still weird.

New carbs are in as are the dynojets. Bike runs and idles amazing while cold. takes throttle the whole works. It just runs a bit rich. After warming up. We shut it down after about 5 mins. It dosent want to startup again, dosent want to run on the idle circuit or main circuit. Real headscratcher here. And it acts like its running lean.

Installed and cleans up a new set of carbs that were intampered with.
New stage 3 jet kit.
New intake o rings
New valves and seats

Checked and verified that-
Chokes are adjusted right
Throttle is adjusted right
Idle is adjusted
Checked for vac leaks
Timing is correct
Valves are fine
Floats are set to 1" for some reasonthey werent stopping the fuel correctly when first put in at the 1" height, but after running the bike and shutting it down on PRI its not leaking a drop. Getting an aquarium hose tomorrow to build a fuel gauge/tool.

Aw hell what else... If I can think of it i'll post it later.

Any ideas?

runs for 5 mins fine and does nto start hmmmm
not to throw a wildcard but are you sure your petcock is working fine?

can you run it off a rexervoir type bottle or perhaps even on prime to see if its a fule starvation issue related to bad petcock or bad vacuum hosing?

[Danjal]

We're trying to get another tank hooked up to it as is. It ran bad on prime last night after the warmup. And fine on "on" while cold.

[Danjal]

We rigged the tank ip with a hose and put it on a ladder, just ran it in PRI.

We found the problem.......now try not to laugh. Theres 2 holes on the carbs, in the dynojet kit install it say to plug them. The old carbs had them linked together. I looked into the manual and apparently they're for a charcoal filter for EPA emissions or something. On the bottem end it was running purely off the idle circuit. We couldnt get it to go anywhere else form the idle. My dad and I just decided to act like it was a problem running lean and went from there. Just of an off shoot we were thinking that these hoses were creating a vac in the bowls.... and they were being linked or plugged it seems. After we got rid of the hoses.... viola. Insta run. Why dynojet would say to plug these I dont know. So thats that for the mystery carb problem. Now its on to fine tune and tweak.

Thanks again for your help here guys. It was very appreciated.

[MacGyver]

We rigged the tank ip with a hose and put it on a ladder, just ran it in PRI.

We found the problem.......now try not to laugh. Theres 2 holes on the carbs, in the dynojet kit install it say to plug them. The old carbs had them linked together. I looked into the manual and apparently they're for a charcoal filter for EPA emissions or something. On the bottem end it was running purely off the idle circuit. We couldnt get it to go anywhere else form the idle. My dad and I just decided to act like it was a problem running lean and went from there. Just of an off shoot we were thinking that these hoses were creating a vac in the bowls.... and they were being linked or plugged it seems. After we got rid of the hoses.... viola. Insta run. Why dynojet would say to plug these I dont know. So thats that for the mystery carb problem. Now its on to fine tune and tweak.

Thanks again for your help here guys. It was very appreciated.

It depends on the generation and purchase location of the carbs/bike I would say. There should be two float/diaphragm breather tubes (nipple on inner side of both carbs, tubes about 1 foot long) that go up to and rest on the top of the air box out of "turbulent" air. If the bike had a charcoal filter system, that should have four tubes from each intake going go the charcoal system - at least according to a service manual I read. Yes, the filter tubes could be plugged, but plugging or linking the float/diaphragm breather would not be a good thing, as you have discovered.