I've spent the last couple of months over the winter doing an entire top-end seal job on the engine. If there's a seal or gasket above the top of the crankcase... it's been replaced.
Yesterday the weather was good enough to take the bike for a ride. After the bike warmed up it was running a bit strange, opening the throttle too fast caused it to hesitate and revving it up from idle produced the same hesitation, It was also down on power and smelling like the middle of an oil refinery.
20 miles later I stop at the nearest petrol station and find out that going 20 miles has cost me about 15 litres of fuel. I check underneath the bike with it idling and see that fuel is just pissing out the bottom of the air-box and onto the crankcase.
So, my plans for the day scuttled, I fill the bike back up and head home.
I figured I either had a sunken float or leaky needle. The bike is 20 years old and I'm not sure if the carbs have ever had a re-build. So I've ordered a couple of re-build kits. The carbs are already apart waiting to be cleaned. Just looking for any more advice on this in terms of the re-build and cleaning.
(https://i.ibb.co/Ws3HyPr/IMG-0158.jpg)
Your float can be tested for "floating" by dropping it in a cup full of gasoline.
Likely you had a stuck float. Shake the bike - but you've pulled the carbs off and apart, so check it not for smooth action.
The float can be adjusted to fill with the correct level of fuel - now the most likely cause.
The float seat O ring is easy to replace, and cheap to buy as well. - now 2nd most likely cause.
Total rebuild kits are really only needed if the float bowl O ring is bad, so you'd be leaving out the side of the carb not into the airbox. You're better off getting individual O rings, not to mention faster, as in stop at auto parts store and buy em by size.
Cool.
Buddha.
Thanks for the advice, I do have an o-ring set but looking at the condition of some of the carburettor-specific seals that came out I've opted to do a full re-build. The float bowl seals were quite stiff and didn't seem to sit proud of the groove either. The floats are all good, no liquid in them and they well.... float.
I was just asking if there's any common issues I should look out for when re-building. Setting float heights different to what the manufacturer recommends ect...
Also thought it good to do as when I bought the bike one of the previous owners had been into the carbs and the right one was assembled incorrectly.
You likely had a float stuck, second possibility as I listed is the floats were set too high, third was O ring.
Rebuild and all is OK but really you create yourself a lot of problems making mistakes etc etc, but you're mechanically very good, you should be fine.
In any case, fix this 1 problem and ride it and see so if it has other smaller flaws, you can adjust for it the next time you tear into the carbs.
Cool.
Buddha.
Carb rebuild is finished. Had a slight issue with hesitation on the first try. Adjusted float heights, replaced new mixture screws with old ones and made sure no lines were pinched. That seems to have sorted the problem, bike runs much better now. Still might tweak the mixtures when I get chance to take it for a good long ride though.