Anybody know anything about honda shadows?

Ive got a 96 shadow 600 that i took in as a stray, it had sat being very rarely ridden for a few months, and now it runs, but hesitates intermittently off the line.
i sprayed a bit of carb cleaner down in it hoping that would help , but it didnt seem to make much difference.
i havent ran it enough to empty the tank, so the gas thats in it could still be kind of shitty.

is it possible that its just the gas? or am i going to have to pull the carbs and clean them?
if i have to pull the carbs, anybody got any advice on getting them on and off, etc? ive never taken a carb off of a bike before... all mine are fuel injected now

You sprayed carb cleaner in the carbs while they're still on the bike and full of gas?? I don't see that doing much. You're gonna have to pull them off and give them a good cleaning. I don't know much about that bike, but you should be able to do it all in a couple hours, and it'll most likely fix your problem. I'd change the gas too.

Don't know if it's true of the 90's Shadows but one problem I ran into on my '83 Shadow 500 was the float bowl gaskets are only available as part of a gasket kit so be careful when you take yours apart.

-Jessie

Unknown gas? Dump it and refill with fresh and a good dose of Seafoam. If that doesn't clear it up, you're probably into the carbs.

600 shadow ... very hard to work on ... the oil filter in a stupid location, cannot remove rear spark plug, near impossible to remove the carbs and a Idiotic chain drive. Yea the dumb rear fender too, and yea it freaking wails and does not move. Geared too low ... or maybe that's all the power it has. And whatever you do to the pipes, it sounds like a 22 ... pat pat pat ... crap.
Cool.
Buddha.

Quote from: The Buddha on December 15, 2009, 09:27:17 AM
600 shadow ... very hard to work on ... the oil filter in a stupid location, cannot remove rear spark plug, near impossible to remove the carbs and a Idiotic chain drive. Yea the dumb rear fender too, and yea it freaking wails and does not move. Geared too low ... or maybe that's all the power it has. And whatever you do to the pipes, it sounds like a 22 ... pat pat pat ... crap.
Cool.
Buddha.

yea tell me about it - the chain drive makes more noise going down the road then the bike does
its not my bike so i have half a mind not to bother much with it, ill drain the gas and maybe seafoam it once the snow clears out, but beyond that i think its on its own

Well, if you are going to do something with it, getting the bad gas out as soon as reasonably possible would be nice, and then you could put the seafoam in, and pray that leaving seafoam in until you dig it out in spring might resolve whatever issues it has. I wouldn't count on that, but it's worth a shot, given that the issues at present seem minor.

Certainly getting bad gas out and good gas in generally helps, as does running the bike enough to clear the snot out of it.

I suppose at the "even lower effort" end of the scale you could toss in a heathy dose of seafoam and top up with good gas, at least. Run enough to get the seafoam into the system, then park it, given that it claims to be a fuel stabilizer among other things. Come spring, go run it until the tank is low and top up with fresh gas - perhaps that'll work.

Oh yea emptying the tank ... easier said than done, it will hold close to a 1/2 gal no matter what you do ... I think honda's are the worst in the world for this "feature" ... cos a CB400 tank I had one time also was impossible to dry ... its filler cap and frame tunnel are so close that you stick a finger in and you touch the bottom of the tank ... no room to put a towel in and dry it like a GS tank, and you put anything in it, its not comming out.

Also it has a dumb fuel pump that just does weird sheite ... I'm glad to be rid of it.

Cool.
Buddha.

Ehh, I'm saying "drain the tank" as in pulling the fuel line and dumping whatever you can get out. It's got minor issues; just put some fresh in with some cleaner and go.

Oh yea it could be that, or even slosh it like crazy and dump it ... like if it had any deposits, mix it up and lose it.
Cool.
Srinath.