Is there a trick to taking the carbs/airbox off?

[Rico]

Chris,
I'm sure your on top of it all ready, but did you get that fire exting. mess cleaned up?

I learned last winter about the corosive properties of that sh!%.
I had a bit of a welding fire while working on my hardtail, and long story short, that was one of the biggist messes I've ever had!
Needless to say that many of the tubes were unprimed and ALL the tins took a beating. EVERYTHING went back in the sandblaster.... I lost 10 days
on the project.

live and learn I did....
Rico

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I cleaned up the mess as soon as it had cooled off enough to do so. I've been through hell trying to get this stuff off of other projects that had to get dealt with in a similiar fashion, never ever fun.

But less painful than the alternative, and thats to let the damned thing burn.

Chris

[Keith Winter]

The correct way, by the book, is to loosen both set's of clamps on the carb's, remove the air box bolts, pull back on the air box and seperate the box from the carbs. Then pull down on the carbs and they will pop out of the intake rubbers. At that point I'd take mine out the right side of the bike so you don't have to fight with the clutch cable. All this work's great when the bike was new but if yours was like mine, the rubbers on the box are hard and don't flex anymore. I used to heat them up with a hair dryer and that worked a little better, then I went to pods and now it's really easy to do carb work.NOTE- the air box is first in and last out.

[dgeorge]

NOTE- the air box is first in and last out.

Keith, I hope you mean first out and last in 8O . It would be awful hard to put it in first and take it out last.

[Keith Winter]

Ok,ok;
So maybe I'm not so good at wording what I'm thinking. I'll try again, this time reading directly from the Haynes manual-77/79 GS1000.
4} Loosen the screw clips which secure the air filter hoses and inlet stubs to the carburettors. Remove the air filter mounting bolts and ease the box rearwards so that the hoses leave the carburettor mouths.
5} The carburettors must be removed WITHOUT first removing the front air filter box. Problems will be encountered if the operator attempts to remove the front air box before the carburettors, as the latter component is obstructed by the frame tubes.

Like I said, I used to have to heat the rubbers on the filter box with a hair dryer to get the carb mouths back in. And like most of us it took 3 or 4 tries to get things right on these carbs, I screwed around with that air box alot. Unless I've got a bad case of brain fade when removing and replaceing the carb set, that box is first to go in/last to come out.

[mushman]

Forget about heating the rubber with the hairdryer. Just smear a bit of vaseline around the inside edge of the rubber tubes-and/or on the carb spigots. Works perfectly and really limits the frustration.

Mushman
82 1100EZ

[first timer]

silicone spray works better vasiline is kinda messy. spray any rubber parts that will be sliding in or over other parts and spray some silicone on them. this will help everything slide into place better.

if i was you i would go through and just do a complete carb rebuild, dip every thing and then spray it out with carb cleaner, just follow the carb rebuild series here on the site. its not to hard just be patient and ask lots of questions, if you are carefully you can probly reuse lots of the carb parts you remove during the cleaning. i was able to clean and rebuild my carbs with all the old parts including gaskets because i was carefull in taking every thing off.

if you do a complete carb clean you will have fixed any problem related to carbs and nothing will come back and bite you in the ass later. oh yeah you will want to install a inline fuel filter so any junk that gets past the petcock doesn't go into the carbs, i use a metal mesh type inline filter the paper kind don't flow as well.

ryan