New to me 2006 GS 500 owner. I hope I like this bike. Had a KLR 650 but it was a beast! Nice to plant my feet on the ground.


Just picked this up with 680 miles on it. It was sitting for awhile so the idle jets are clogged. Is it hard to pull the carbs myself and clean out the jets? Do I drop the float bowls and just pull the jets out and clean them? Any tips appreciated. The dealer wants $200 bucks!!!  Do I have to re-sink the carbs afterward? I have to run it with the choke on to keep it idling becasue of the cloged jets.


Also I seeing some oil or greasy thick type of fluid where the exhaust header meets the cannister. Could there be a crack there? I'm not sure if the fluid is coming from there or somewhere above and leaking down. It on the side of the back tire to. Maybe an overflow hose from above?
Thanks for anyone's suggestions this look's like a great site and I think I'll really like my bike if I can get it running correctly.

Thanks!

Quote from: rger8 on December 19, 2009, 09:00:28 AM
New to me 2006 GS 500 owner. I hope I like this bike. Had a KLR 650 but it was a beast! Nice to plant my feet on the ground.

Welcome to the asylum!

Quote
Just picked this up with 680 miles on it. It was sitting for awhile so the idle jets are clogged. Is it hard to pull the carbs myself and clean out the jets? Do I drop the float bowls and just pull the jets out and clean them? Any tips appreciated. The dealer wants $200 bucks!!!  Do I have to re-sink the carbs afterward? I have to run it with the choke on to keep it idling becasue of the cloged jets.

Not hard to do.  Hardest part will be the airbox, probably.  Careful with the screws on the carbs.  They are JIS, not SAE Philips.  Without a JIS screwdriver you are likely to strip the heads.  AT $200 it is definitely worth doing it yourself!

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Also I seeing some oil or greasy thick type of fluid where the exhaust header meets the cannister. Could there be a crack there? I'm not sure if the fluid is coming from there or somewhere above and leaking down. It on the side of the back tire to. Maybe an overflow hose from above?

I would think it's from an overflow hose.   

You could try to just pull the bottoms off, but if it's new to you it's probably be worth it to just pull the tank off and take the carbs off and pull them all apart. I had no clue what I was doing the first time I did it and it only took a couple hours. It'd be way quicker now, but still.

My first bike was a Yamaha xt550. Pretty big bike too! The GS is a bit more useful.

Welcome to the forum.

definitely clean the jets, and wash everything out in the carbs with carb cleaner. getting those screws off in one piece is a pain, I suggest using vicegrips, or you WILL strip them. replace them with some stainless ones and you're all good. You might need to do what I had to do and clean everything that has to do with the fuel system, lines, petcock, the whole shebangabang.

Plus 1000 on the Vice-Grip screw removal method