New Member - Success with Carbs

[pjm123a]

Hi All,

 

New Member here and learning a lot. I have 2002 Midnight Venture with less than 8000 miles. She still has the original tires. Below is a picture.

 

Lately she has been been doing nothing much beyond sitting in the garage collecting cobwebs. At one point several months ago I brought a new battery and went to start it up. It did not start and there was fuel leaking from the carb overflows. I am in SW Florida and and we have 10% ethanol in our gas and I'm figuring that did me in. Thanks to the great article from Freebird:

http://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?t=7830

 

I got the carbs off and cleaned up. Now the bike runs great and idles great. I had them on and off about 8 times before I finally got it right. On the last attempt I looked through one of the pilot jets and realized the tiny pinhole was a bit smaller than the rest. No amount of blowing would clear it. I have a carb cleaning tool that has wires in various diameters. I poked the smallest one through a good pilot jet and felt no resistance. I then poked it through the one with the smaller pinhole and felt resistance. I pushed it through and then blew it out again. I could *see* some crud fly out of it. After that it finally idled OK.

 

Only issue is that I somehow ended up with a left over screw that I *think* is from the bike. Probably from the area around the middle of the bike because I also replaced the fuel filter and checked out the fuel pump which turned out to be OK. There is a picture of the screw. It is a philips head and about 3/4 inch long with a washer. If anybody recognizes it and knows where it goes, I would appreciate it if you could let me know.

 

Since I got so much from this forum already, I would like to contribute something. One of the warnings in dealing with these carbs is to not lose the tiny O-Ring in the edge of the bodies that gets exposed when you remove the diaphragms. Of course I lost one - perhaps it was never there. At any rate, I had a set of O-rings I picked up a while ago from Harbor Freight to fix a leaky hand held sprayer. The smallest in this set worked pretty well in the carb and I like I said, the bike is running real sweet now. There are some pics showing the O-ring set and the label. Your biggest problem will be what to do with the other 381 o-rings in the set. I also found that using plastic cups to protect the intake while the carbs were off worked pretty well.

 

Thanks again Freebird for the great article. I probably would not even have tried this without it as a guide. After about the 4th time taking them on and off, I was able to do it in about 10 minutes. First time is always hardest!

[reddevilmedic]

welcome aboard! only 1 screw leftover? i usually have a handful....i will notice a rattle now and then and put a screw in it, and swear it was there before. good work.

[eusa1]

Remove the drivers seat and look down in front of the battery between the battery and the. Rear tank bolt there is a void where the center section between the battery covers has a screw mounting hole that holds the tail end of a wire loom shield above the rear cylinders.

Put that screw back in place, would ya?

[joevegas3907]

very nice story..... Im very vey glad you got your bike up and running...

[pmelah]

nice job but red solo cups work better :confused24::rotf:

[djh3]

PJM welcome. I'm over across SR64 from ya. Hope you enjoy your new bike. If you have been reading here at all, by now you have read somewhere about running some seafoam or Berrymans B-12 thru ocasionaly. This crap gas we got now is not friendly to carb bits for some reason. Maybe we can get together sometime. There was also a newer member down in Naples looking for places to ride here a couple days ago. If you havent invested the $12 for a membership, put it on your list. I assure you will get that much in info and entertainment. Too bad we only get about 300 decent days to ride here.