Homemade petcock, still have starting prob ...

[satchmo]

This might sound stupid but have you tried putting your petcock to 'prime' instead of using the starting fluid. Sometimes when mine has trouble starting right up, I stick it on prime for a short bit and away she goes.

Satch

[Anonymous]

I'll try that tomorrow again, it didn't work last week as it had not been started in weeks anyway. Maybe the simple solution will work this time (fingers crossed!). It does tend to leak out of the #3 carb when I have the petcock on PRI - that was the whole trouble with the fuel tap in the first place, hence the lawnmower cutoff switch. Strangely enough, though, when I left it the switch to ON the last time, it didn't leak at all - as if having been running for several minutes sealed something back up. Weird.

It certainly does sound like it's just having trouble getting gas in initially, doesn't it? In a car, I would say that this would be the problem. Bikes can be different, though. I'll keep ya'll posted.