2001 GS500 Questions No power.

[mstp]

I have a 2001 Suzuki GS500 recently purchased and having been working on going through the manual doing the various checks on the bike.

I haven't gotten the bike rideable quite yet, but hope I am getting close.   I looked in the gas tank and saw a few slight rust-like particles.  I removed the old gas and got some new.  I decided to clean the carbs following the guide on this website.  They had some orange residues in them and one of the floats was sticking due to a bad screw.  So i purchased a new screw and now the floats seem to be working good.  I also replaced the orings on the jets because they were brittle.  I then put everything back together, being sure of proper hose routing, etc to the best I can.

I took the bike around the parking lot for a test drive and had very little power in first gear to where I could go maybe 5 mph max, and a slight incline it would die.  Sometime giving it gas would cause the RPM to increase maybe 3k, but however, the bike would not move any faster then putt along barely rolling.

I tried to spray some carb cleaner around the boots to check for leaks but couldn't seam to detect anyone.  Anyone have any ideas were I should go about troubleshooting this one from here?

Any ideas/suggestions appreciated.

2010/08/16 9:55p Update:
I messed with the idle a little and let it warm up for awhile.  Rode around the parking lot and was getting a little more power, so i rode down to the street, going about 30-40, but still seemed to be wavering on power until it died.  I then adjusted idle, restarted it, and it shot up to 6,000 rpms and just hovered there until i turned the idle back down and then it died.  So, I readjusted idle to the 1200 mark and then the bike returned back down to the No power scenario where I can't  get going anywhere passed 5mph.

[JAY W]

Could be that you`ve pinched a diaphragm on screwing the top down or poss` got the needle set up wrong.Have you checked the float height using a tube off the drain outlet?

[mstp]

Hello,

I checked the float height using the drain outlet and they line up right on per the directions on the how-to.  When cleaning the carbs the rubber from the needle seemed to be in good condition and I made sure to keep the little o-rings on top in place, but other than that I do not know how to go about checking the needles further, I just dropped them back in after cleaning. I had the needles out for a few days while cleaning and the rubber was in a kinked type position setting on my floor, but upon putting them back in it seemed fine perhaps I damaged them?

Also to mention I originally tried the with the fuel/air screws set to 2.5 turns.  I adjusted to 2 turns which seemed to help a little, but two turns was were the described problem above is occurring.

[reload]

so there is throttle response but no power overall?

did you check all the hosing from the tank petcock through the vacuum petcock to the carburetor. also check if the breather hose is clogged or not.