Cleaning Carbs -EXTERNALLY....

[Diamondj]

Hi all!

Okay I know how to rebuild the 26mm carbs for my '78 GS1000 so that they run great. Unfortunately, they still look awful! Very grey, corroded, and dingy. So, are there any magic potions out there to clean them in a spray or two or am I looking at burning up a large amounts of elbow grease to get these clunkers clean? And it looks like if it's the elbow grease option, I will need to dissasemble the rack to do the job right. First question here is can they be dissasembled? Are there any hidden pitfalls I should know about? Any other recommendations from someone who has suffered through this already?

Thank you!!

Jim

[Anonymous]

What kind of finish do you want from them? Mirror? Or just not greasy? Do you want the carbs to gleam on their own or do you just want them to look OK from the outside of the bike?

If I wanted to make them look real pretty on their own I'd probably disassemble them and then mask and sandblast the aluminum outsides.

Whatever you do, don't leave bare aluminum. Coat it with something. I use clear coat paint. Let it cure well. Should be fairly resistant to gasoline then. If you don't coat it you wind up with hard white deposits where rainwater reacts with the aluminum. Hard to clean then.

Michael

[Billy Ricks]

Carbs are pretty soft metal compared to engine cases and such. They polish up nicely with little effort. Semi-chrompoli (spelling) is the best stuff I've ever used for this type of aluminum. You can get them looking like chrome. I disagree about coating them. Even on engne covers once they are polished up it's a mistake to clearcoat them again. Once you have them polished it takes very little effort if you stay on top of it to keep them polished. If you clearcoat you will eventually end up with oxidation under the clearcoat. The oxidation that builds up under clearcoat is a PITA to polish out.

[KEITH KRAUSE]

I agree with Billy's entire post. Semi-chrome or Blue Magic paste works great on the carbs. You can use felt bobs or ? with a drill to get into the crevices. I polished up the outside carbs on my '79 GS1000E and it was pretty easy. I plan to do an even better job the next time.
Visit my website to see a close up of my carbs and other polishing work if you like. Then you can decide if it's worth it.
Just click the WWW symbol below.

[Diamondj]

Thanks for the info guys!

I was thinking any finish beyond oxidized grey would be nice. Natural aluminum color or nice and shiny - either would be good. Keith & Billy - did you disassemble your carbs completely to polish them or did you just work around all the various components? I have a little tub of "Artesian metal polish" from Por-15 that works very well. I tried one round of coating a float bowl with this stuff and them buffing it off with a paper towel. It looks 100 percent better. I guess it's just a matter of applying enought polish and elbow grease! ;-)

Thanks guys!

Jim

[Billy Ricks]

You don't have to disassemble. I use a toothbrush with very small amounts of polishing compound so you don't leave globs in tight spaces.

[Don Lobacz]

I use a dremel tool with a small soft wire wheel attachment. This also works great around the bike in crevises and on chrome.

[KEITH KRAUSE]

My carbs were in good shape to begin with. I polished the outside carbs on the bike.

[Anonymous]

I am just putting my 26VM's back together. I've been doing a frame off on my 79 1000L. (getting close to finished). I had no problems taking the carbs completely apart (off rack). I dipped them, scuffed them up, and had a friend paint them with a metallic silver (DBU system for those that know paint). Three coats of clear later and I have one good looking set of carbs. Granted that this was more than overboard, but I like the clean look.

While putting the starter circuits back on lat night I came across an interesting thing. I, like many others have had problems with the choke staying on while warming up the bike. (The "L" model has a choke knob that comes up through the triple trees. not sure of others). I noticed the it was very hard for me to operate the starter assemblies by hand. Whipped out some multipurpose oil and wow what a diference. I'm just hoping that this might solve the problem when I go to fire it up (hopefully in one week)

Sorry about the long winded reply. To answer your original question, NO. I did not run into anything too difficult while taking them off the rack. Just make sure to keep everything organized.

-Tom

[KEITH KRAUSE]

The pull chokes mounted on the bars have a knurled plastic adjuster ring under the rubber dust cover. If you look closely at it you can see the little pinchers that put tension on the shaft. Turning this clockwise tightens the tension and ccw loosens it. A lot of people have had trouble over-adjusting these (too tight) and damaging them. The ring only needs to be snug to hold the shaft correctly. There also should be about 2-3 mm of slack at the pull knob.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I put it all back together last night. Took the cable out and cleaned it. Then lubed it back up. Seems much better now, but I won't really know until the rest of the bike is put back together. From the way it worked before, it can only get better.

Thanks,
-Tom