this is continuatoin of this thread http://gstwins.com/gsboard/index.php?topic=27357.0

i realized i left the petcock on prime for 5 days, the float bowl was flooded. so i drained the float bowls and the carbs are clean. the plugs are really fouled. so we cleaned the plugs. the engine starts but when i turn the choke on the idle goes very low and kills the engine. the idle is very inconsistent which forces me to mess with that a lot. the bike is completely stock, except for a uni filter.  any ideas?

Chech your mixture... should be about 2.5 turns out.

Quote from: joedude on June 18, 2006, 05:11:49 PM
Chech your mixture... should be about 2.5 turns out.

its currently set to 3 turns, so ill put it to 2.5. how does that affect the choke?

it won't, but it will affect your idle... Your choke also affects your idle by messing with the mixture (makes it richer by ristricting airflow)

make sure your carbs are visually sync'd?


Thats just a shot in the dark though.

Quote from: TragicImage on June 18, 2006, 07:41:32 PM
make sure your carbs are visually sync'd?

ya, i definitely know they need to be sync'd because the left side was overly rich and the right side was a little bit lean.

What I'm curious about is what happens with the choke on Marlopez's bike... It idled really low when starting with the choke open, and would nearly die, then with the choke closed, it would run alright. Once it was warmed up the idle would shoot up to about 5k, and it would require a bunch of fiddling with the idle knob to get it back down. Opening the choke at that point on my bike causes the revs to shoot up, on his, opening the choke kills it. I can't figure out what that is indicative of.

I know it needs a carb balancing, and the $5 balancer works real well... I bet his bike will run a whole lot better after we get the carbs synched. Neither of us have any idea how to do a "visual synch", so we didn't try anything like that. I  also suspect it could use a valve clearance correction, but I'm still waiting on Kerry's kit   

I used to have that High-rev issue (along with most GS owners on here) and after a recent re-jet and a little tuning of the mixture screws... my bike now runs fine!

Doing a carb sync is definetly a good idea... but in my experience synching would not be a cause of this.

Float levels are too high.  When you add choke it adds more fuel to an existing, overly rich, fuel problem.

Here's a link to check the choke: http://gstwins.com/gsboard/index.php?topic=8756
Or, don't add so much choke.  But, that's not the real problem.  The real problem is that your float levels are too high.

Use a clear tube attached to the drain spigot of one carb's floatbowl and raise the tube up next to the carb, open the drain screw and measure how far up the tube the fuel level is.  Do this in PRIme.  If the level is over the flaotbowl gasket level, it's too high.

How does one adjust the float level?

You have to take off the carbs.
You have to take off the floatbowls (one at a time)
Gently and slowly bend the metal tab towards the float needle, or towards the carb body.  The metal tab is located near the pivot of the floats.  When the floats rise, they will close the float needle against the needle seat, stopping flow of fuel (for the time being).

So, to lower the float level (how much fluid is in the bowl) one would bend the tab up towards the carb body and away from the float bowl? How far do you bend it to adjust, like 1mm up lowers the float level 1mm?

A minute change can make a mm of difference.

I have have good results with the procedure described in the Haynes manual.  (See the link in this post.)