Stuck Carb Slide

[pres589]

Any reason to believe a carb slide stuck wide open won't happen again?  Backstory: It's finally warm enough here to go and fiddle with the GS.  Last time I rode the thing was 2 months ago, and I was trying to figure out why it had a nasty flat spot / surge condition from about 2k to 6k RPM on the street.  It idled great.  The plug in the cylinder next to my left knee was running lean by the looks of the electrode.  But it got cold in a hurry the next day and I never got farther than pulling the body work off.  Today I start by pulling off the air filter and the "left" carb's slide is stuck in the wide open position.  I flick the slide with my finger and it shuts, quick and smooth.  I throw the tank on, the bike starts right up, idles great, etc etc.  It's about 55F out right now and it needed little choke, and I'm about to ride it around the neighborhood to see if the lean crap comes back.

Thoughts on this? 

[starwalt]

I've been digging through search responses for "carb slide" and came up with one possibility -- CLICK HERE

[pres589]

It seems to indeed be the slide spring.  Pulled the cap off of the offending carb after getting it stuck after a short high-RPM blast, and the slide was wide open again. The spring itself had a couple coils in the middle that were out of round, and my efforts to try and draw them back in line by twisting on the spring looked good but the thing still hangs up.  So I'll be ordering a new spring from the dealer tomorrow and once that shows up, I'll see if that helps. I can get the slide to hang up by running it through it's range of motion with a finger on the slide.  Seems odd that this would happen, maybe the spring had a problem and is getting worse with use?  Or maybe my own ham fisted work on the carbs caused it?  In any case, I guess this is something to remember when a slide sticks wide open.

[mach1]

yeah it could have benn a defected part that was not that bad but over time got worse i used to see it all the time when i used to work at pepboys the guys inside would treat the parts like crap drop them and throw them around and when we get them we think they are good put them on and the car will come back a week later with a bad part. i think the most times i had a bad parts on a car was 4x and it was a starter, come to find out all the starters they gave me came from the same bin and that bin was dropped off the truck they come in and i guess something happened to them i was unaware abotu i dont know. 

[Wrecent_Wryder]

3f

[pres589]

Mine had what looked like (and I think was) a light dusting of graphite all over the outside surface of the slides when I took it apart. The first time I didn't have any on hand, but after that I dusted them when I worked on them.

By appearance, it could have been molybdenum disulfide powder, which I also have, but that really makes sense only for metals. I'm pretty sure it's just graphite. I'd check the needle in the main jet too, make sure it moves freely, but that's more likley to cause it to stick in the down position.

Slide seems very free until it hangs up mechanically on *something* and I am going to bet it's the spring.  Needle seems very free as well.  It kind of feels like it "latches", for lack of a better word, when the slide is fully lifted.  The bellows is about 5 months old, I don't think that part has failed at all, and the stack of parts that controls the needle (washers, the nylon donut, etc) all seems to be installed fine.  Will order a spring from the stealership this morning and see what that does when it shows up.

If everything goes according to plan the bike will be running on new tires, have a new chain, have new front indicators (bought it with one shattered and held together with packing tape), and have a Katana 600 rear shock off of what is said to be a 2006.  Now if I can just finalize the carb maitenance...

[Wrecent_Wryder]

Y4

[pres589]

I've been warned off of changing the rear to a Katana shock (waiting on the shelf) until the front springs are upgraded. All I know about that is what I've ben told here..

I performed the change to Progressives and 15w fork oil up front before I had the bike tagged.  Bought it with a rag tied around the right fork, previous owner told me that fork oil "used to leak out and the rag kept it off of the front brake".

This should kind of show what level of maitenance I've had to perform, but most all of it has focused on the fuel system.  This slide spring issue is cake compared to all the times it left me stranded, waiting for vapor lock to go away due to various fuel filter solutions I dealt with before going to a very small sintered bronze job, Kreme job on the tank, and a Pingel.

[starwalt]

This should kind of show what level of maitenance I've had to perform, but most all of it has focused on the fuel system. 

Yep, yahoo-jack-leg wrenchers abound. You can inherit all kinds of buggers.
Here's what I found inside some carbs I won on ebay.


Those big nuts and that other mess were in the diaphragm/bellows area. The spacers on the needles were also of a unknown purpose. The springs were cut at some odd length also. I guess someone was doing a "high performance modification" of some type.

Some parts of those carbs were just tossed because the PO had taken a Dremel to the insides of the top/dome and chewed it up for some reason.

Another variation on the "spaced needle" theme from another set of carbs was some cut off electrical crimp plastic between the donut and the needle top.


Funny, I don't see that in the OEM manual. 
Maybe there is some site that discusses carb mods like these?

[Wrecent_Wryder]

45v