GS1100L Carb issue

[yoshisakan]

Hey everyone, this is my first time posting but I have been reading info here for a while. I just picked up a gs1100L yesterday. This is my second GS. These bikes are great.

This GS has a few problems. When I bought it, there was fuel in the oil. I noticed that there is an aftermarket petcock, i believe its not original anyway, so I figured it was just allowing too much fuel to the carb bowls. I changed the oil and set the petcock to reserve when the bike is off to prevent this. Is there anything else I should do here?

As far as the way the bike runs. It idles perfectly smooth. I took it down the street and when I gave it more than 1/8 throttle it started to really bog down. I started thinking and realized that when I took the air box off earlier, that there was no filter in the box. Could this bogging be caused by the bike running too rich since there's no air filter? Since the bike is idling so well, I'm hoping that I won't need to tear down the carbs and clean them, but if I have to so be it.

[jwhelan65]

First off welcome!

I would pull the carbs, clean them thoroughly and replace every o-ring. Buy a new air fiter and make sure everything is tight and sealed off. The closer you can return everything to stock the better it will run.

[yoshisakan]

Well this morning I replaced the air filter. Turns out there was one in there. It looked really old though, so I replaced it with some air conditoner filter of the same amount. It turned out pretty good and the bike acted just like it did before with the old filter. I took the bike around the block and made it probably 2000ft before it sputtered and died. I walked back to my house, pulled out the spark plugs which were slightly wet, dried them off, and the bike started back up, running long enough to make it back home.

I pulled the carbs and dissambeled them. They are in a bath of pinesol at the moment. I looked at all the jets and you could see through them. There were no obstructions or excessive carbon/gum build up. Or any for that matter. The one strange thing that I noticed was the fuel adjustment screw on the 2nd cylinder from the left side. (from the riding perspective) The adjustment screw was stripped and so I just left it.

Once I put these back together, im pretty sure that I am going to end up with the same result as before. What is the proper way to go about tuning these once they are put back together? I can't find a maintenance manual for this bike to save my life.