order or ops on carbs

[Steve]

when I said the bike would take 2 minutes of choke, I may have mislead you. I'm totally unsure of how long the bike ran on choke, but it took about 2 minutes of pressing the starter button, taking it off, pressing it, taking it off, pressing it, etc before the bike would fire.

WOW, you really need to do some work on your bike.

Starting drill here (with her bike) is:
Set 'choke' to about half
Verify kill switch is set to RUN
Turn key ON
Verify neutral light
Push starter button for about 2 seconds
Adjust engine speed to stay under 2,000 rpm by using 'choke'
Put on helmet and gloves
RIDE
After getting into second gear, turn off 'choke'
Continue ride.


(My bike is virtually the same, except I keep the 'choked' idle speed to about 1200. Warm idle is a whopping 700 rpm.)
.

I live in Philly and my folks live in princeton. It's a decent drive, but one I've never been able to make on this bike without having to fill it up along the way. From what I'm hoping it is a trip there and back without a fill up. It's about 100 miles round trip.

No reason your bike should not make it on one tank. True, the '81 L-series bikes had smaller tanks (about 3.5 gallons, and about 1 of those gallons is in reserve), but you should be getting at least 40 mpg, so the 2.5 gallons in the main tank should take you the 100 miles.

My wife's '82 850L has a 4.5 gallon tank, and we typically go about 140 miles before even putting it on reserve. Unfortunately, I don't think a later tank will fit on your bike without some modifications.

.

[sipman]

UPdate

So this evening, I started up my bike. I have the freshly cleaned carbs, with what i think are stock jets in on it. I tried to adjust the bypass screws to get to a higher RPM, but none made any effect. So I guessed my balance may be so out of whack. I figured I'd try and come back to it.

The bike started up well which was encouraging, but balancing the carbs was nearly impossible. I tried to balance #2 to #3 but the idle went up and down and the balance would never hold steady, never mind even. (I did plug the vacuum line to the petcock. I had attached a 16 oz pony bottle to the bike and it positively chucked it. I needed to refill it 4 times!!! Now I'm no expert, but that seems like a ton of refills for a bike that's idling at 1500rpm, right?
So after failing on #2 and #3, I decided to sync # 2 to #1 which worked. Then #1 to #4 , which also worked. I had the bike idling at 1K. So I though I was set. A quick blip of the throttle, and it's once again too high idle, then another blip, it's too low. SO I can't even imagine what makes this bike vary it's idle like this.
Then I decided, maybe I gotta just ride it for a few and open it up, so I installed the tank. I've replaced all the black gas lines with vinyl so I can see everthing. Once i connected the #2 Vacuum line on, I could see both it and the main fuel line had fuel in it. Does this mean my Petcock has failed? Also, after riding a little, the bike was smoking out the tailpipes like crazy. I'm assuming it's running rich from #2 sucking gas from the petcock, but would it make sense for all 4 pipes to blow out smoke? I'm thinking it's black smoke, not white but it was late so I was only seeing it when cars had their lights on behind me at red lights.

So in recap, my bike is still guzzling gas, I think my petcock has failed, and I;m not sure if the idle adjust screws do anything on the carbs. Any idea if theses symptoms mean one problem?

[Suzuki_Don]

The varying idle sounds like an air leak to me. Have you turned the mixture screws in till they bottom out, and then back them out by 2 1/2 turns. Try richening the mixture screws by another 1/2 turn and see if this makes things settle down. It definitely sounds like you need a new petcock. Don't try and rebuild as it rarely works.

[sipman]

mixture screws

Hi,

I bottomed out the mixture screws and it seemed to do nothing. So I set them all at 1 1/2 turns out. I'll try and additional turn. How do I chase down a leak? Do i spray carb cleaner all over? wait for a rev