Cleaning carbs

[airgreesemonkey]

Originally Posted by crustyrider

Nice write up too... word of advice/experience DON"T beat on the carbs with a rubber mallet to get them to go on to the boots..you will break them.

ya definatley made that mistake before... oops, luckily i knew someone that had a parts bike and he sold me a new lower airfilter housing for cheap

[dizzy]

Good job, Toe cutter. Having done many sets of V4 carbs myself I have a few tips to add....

If you carefully heat the intake manifold boots with a heat gun 'til they're quite warm to touch, they become much more pliable and easy to work with. Also, silicone rubber lube is your friend...and that dull screwdriver you never use anymore makes a good shoehorn.

If you wanna rid yourself of those mixture screw tabs just heat briefly with a butane torch or soldering tool and they come right off, they're just loctited on. Don't melt the brass...they don't need to be THAT hot.

ALWAYS replace the float bowl gaskets if they've been in there more than a few years...epecially on V4's or 'angled' carbs The angle of the carbs means fuel sits directly over the mating surface. I've seen quite a few drip has out the bottem corner.

Regarding those fuel feed lines between the carbs...never use to have problems with them but the last few years I've seen a 'rash' of leakers. So...I've begun auto replacing the O-rings on my V4 cleans. It can be done without completely separating the carbs. If you unbolt the carbs from the air plenum and carefully 'pop' out the synch springs and forks, you can gain enough clearance to (careful now, that plastic is old and brittle) remove and reinstall the fuel feed lines without disturbing any other linkages or shafts.

Something I don't see mentioned often...but if you want your bike to start good, don't neglect the starter jets (usually fixed in the carb body) that feed fuel to the enrichener circuit. Make sure they're open.

While this has been an excellent 'how to' there's really alot more to this and the way carbs work than has been described. And those carbs weren't that dirty...they can be really, really nasty green and require much more extensive work than the ones pictured. Weird issues can and usually do come up that a 'do it yourselfer' will not be well prepared to deal with. You can do more damage than good and give yourself problems that didn't exist and will be hard for even an expert to find. So...if you think you're gettin' in too deep, please consider letting a trusted mechanic do the work for you.