Well I got them off the bike. But all 4 screws to remove the float bowls are stuck like big dogs. Liquid Wrench didn't help. Guess tomorrow I'll be buying an impact driver set. Hope that won't bugger the screws... Any other ideas?

And it looks like I need rebuild kits. Wasn't planning on using them but I lost one of the o-rings while moving the carbs from the kitchen table for dinner. Oops. 

Best price I've found is partsnmore.com by a significant margin (only $12 per). But they have a minimum order of $35. Anyone else need carb rebuild kits? If so I'll buy some extras and resell at cost + shipping...   

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Before you buy an impact driver and start banging away, take a closer look at the float-bowl screws. Kinda looks like a phillips-head, right? Close, but not quite. Google posidrive, do a bit of reading, buy yourself the right size driver and spare those poor carbs. For the record, I mashed my own screws with and impact driver, virtually destroyed them and replaced them with stainless allen screws. They were a pain to find, though.

Man the GStwinners are smart people ... its definetly posidrive.
The saving grace though is, the tool I been using (a impact driver bit I found at a tool store a while back ) is exactly that. It looks like a shorter or a sawn off phillips. More over, I have long thought that its cross section is more like a german swastika (axe head legs for a swastika).
Cool.
Srinath.

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Quote from: Flywheel on April 15, 2007, 02:57:04 AM
Before you buy an impact driver and start banging away, take a closer look at the float-bowl screws. Kinda looks like a phillips-head, right? Close, but not quite. Google posidrive, do a bit of reading, buy yourself the right size driver and spare those poor carbs. For the record, I mashed my own screws with and impact driver, virtually destroyed them and replaced them with stainless allen screws. They were a pain to find, though.

Where did you find the stainless allen screws?  All I can find is steel, and I'm tired of rust.  It's much better than the screws that were on there.  I wish that there would be a ban on phillips/posidrive screws.

Posi-drive the same thing as "Japanese Phillips"? Someone told me it might be that. Hopefully I can find a bit or driver locally and not have to wait to order one.

Thanks Wrecent_Wryder for the reminder to slow down and the tip to just buy the o-ring. And it would cost me about as much in gasoline to go to the nearest Suzuki dealer (about an 80 mile round trip) as shipping would cost, but the advantage is I'd get the ring today... 

Quote from: Tyro on April 15, 2007, 07:40:16 AM
Posi-drive the same thing as "Japanese Phillips"? Someone told me it might be that. Hopefully I can find a bit or driver locally and not have to wait to order one.

Thanks Wrecent_Wryder for the reminder to slow down and the tip to just buy the o-ring. And it would cost me about as much in gasoline to go to the nearest Suzuki dealer (about an 80 mile round trip) as shipping would cost, but the advantage is I'd get the ring today... 

You sure about that?  I'm lucky if my dealer has oil in stock. 

Quote from: Egaeus on April 15, 2007, 07:44:03 AM

Quote from: Tyro on April 15, 2007, 07:40:16 AM
Posi-drive the same thing as "Japanese Phillips"? Someone told me it might be that. Hopefully I can find a bit or driver locally and not have to wait to order one.

Thanks Wrecent_Wryder for the reminder to slow down and the tip to just buy the o-ring. And it would cost me about as much in gasoline to go to the nearest Suzuki dealer (about an 80 mile round trip) as shipping would cost, but the advantage is I'd get the ring today... 

You sure about that?  I'm lucky if my dealer has oil in stock. 

Well I was gonna call first... 

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You guys are goddamn awesome. After checking 2 stores I found a set of 100 bits that included posi-drive heads. Set me back $25 with a driver handle, but I got off 3 of the 4 screws. And now I can unscrew probably 99% of screws on the planet... 

The last one was totally stripped by previous owner. If an easy-out doesn't work it's dremel time on that one.

I have used needle nose vice grips to successfully extricate stuck carb screws.  My most successful method involved a 1/4" #2 phillips bit, a 1/4" boxed-end wrench, and a drill press for screws that weren't totally stripped.  While holding the carb, crank down the drill press (not running!) and while pressing hard, use the wrench to turn the bit (and the screw).  The drill press prevents it from camming out. 

ALL RIGHT!!!

Got the carbs taken down cleaned and rebuilt, took me I guess almost 2 hours. I did not take out the choke plunger assemblies, mostly because I had trouble with the damn clips and gave up. One carb (IIRC the left one) was in worse shape than the other. The brass bits (needle jet was especially bad - looked like it had tar on it) were really nasty. They're still kind of dark colored but not gunky any more.

I am gonna have to do it again because a few O-rings were brittle/old enough they broke. I'm probably just gonna get the rebuild kits and do them all for my own peace of mind. Should be easier the next time.

Overall I feel like I accomplished something. Like when you solve a puzzle, it wasn't too hard that I wanted to quit but it was difficult enough to make me work at it.  Though there were a few moments (trying to get the float needle back on the float assembly, trying to line up the needle jet flat with the carb body just right) that I was thinking "carbs are the work of the devil!" 

Just to cap the thread, here's a link that leads to a brief history of the phillips and posidrive screws: http://www.justbrits.com/pozi/pozidriv.html. Robertson screws feature a superior head design to either, in my experience. As for the stainless allen screws, I went to Brafasco, which is a Toronto-based company specializing in fasteners of all sorts. It's surprising to hear anyone from the States having trouble finding stuff like that, though; up here, even the basics are difficult to come by (finally scored a Haynes manual last week).

Just got the May issue of Motorcyclist...

Just inside the back cover, they cover basically what was said in this whole thread. 

Thought it was pretty timely, and interesting. 

I also had my carbs off last month for a rejet.  I had the same issue with the float bowl screws.  I used vice-grips on the outside of the screw heads to crack them.  A PO had totally buggered the heads. 

I noticed that the four screws holding the carbs to the alignment bracket are exactly the same length and thread size, so I swapped them for the float bowl screws.  Now it's time to get a posidrive screwdriver and not bugger these on the next rejet...

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Well my order from Ron Ayers arrived today. Got the O-rings and gaskets replaced. Amazing what a difference the new O-rings made. Rather than just dropping in, I actually had to use a small bit of force and then the parts would "click" into place. Hmm probably a much better seal...

I ordered new factory screws for the float bowls and just used some anti-sieze lubricant. Call me paranoid but I'd rather take the chance on having stuck screws again than the chance of stripping or goobering the float bowl body.