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Short story: cleaned a set of carbs using the Larry method. Worked great.
Longer story: I just completed a full dismantling, cleaning, and reassembly of a set of carbs for my 82 GL500I, and I was surprised how easy it was to do - with the help of experts. Going in I thought it might be a recipe for learning a lot and junking a set of carbs, but I put about 50 miles on them yesterday and today with nary a stumble at any RPM.
I got a set of carbs off the Internet a couple weeks ago labeled as complete but unknown condition. I'd already purchased a Harbor Freight ultrasonic cleaner, and got a copy of the Carb Rebuilding book from Larry (LRCXed on the forum). I took the carbs apart per the instructions in the book, keeping the left side parts separate from the right side parts. In retrospect that wasn't necessary, but my engineering background pushed me towards the organized approach. There really aren't that many parts to these carbs, but the ones that are there are important ones! Everything went into the ultrasonic with Simple Green and H20 in 3 batches - left body and parts, right body and parts, and jets by themselves. Again, probably not necessary to keep everything apart, but...
The ultrasonic is pretty amazing. Grease/dirt "boils" off the parts and dirties the cleaning solution quickly. Depending on how dirty things are to start, I think you have to change the water more often than the twice per batch that I did. The dirty water combined with ultrasound will actually stain the carb metal if left too long. I cleaned mine for about 2.5 hours each batch, turning the parts often to let things fall out. Carb cleaner flushing, hot water, and compressed air then gets most of the left-over gunk out except for the small holes in the jets. I used twist drill bits for those, since I guess someone smarter than me decided they should be .018" diameter and not .019" or telephone wire size. There are multiple relief valves that could also be taken apart, but since mine were working with compressed air I didn't get into them.
Putting things together is always a little more interesting than taking them apart, but again the instructions in the book kept me straight. Since I separated my bodies, I had to re-install the choke spring and get everything aligned pretty close so tubes, shafts and linkages between the two didn't bind. Also the better you get the two working together on the bench the easier syncing will be later on when they are installed. The o-rings seemed to be in good shape so I re-used everything, but it's probably prudent to at least replace the ones on the idle mixture screws and on the fuel crossover tubes. Gasket/o-ring set is $50/carb at Honda, $40-ish at discount. Total bench time the first time ever taking a carb apart was probably 8+ hours, but I wasn't in a hurry and that includes all the flushing and blowing. Next time less, for sure if the bodies aren't separated.
Got everything back together, installed and balanced using a Morgan CarbTune II. No leaks, idle is smooth at 1000 rpm, and acceleration is remarkably improved. I had been complaining that my bike didn't jump off the line like others I'd had in the class, but now I think it's right there. I hadn't really had any discernible problems with the old carb set other than weak acceleration performance, and it looks like the cleaning has corrected that. Can't speak to hesitations at certain rpms or after warm-up or some of the other issues seen around this site, but I'm now a firm believer in cleaning your pipes and orifices - at least the ones on your carbs.
Thanks to Larry and Blue Fox for the technical and moral support.
Longer story: I just completed a full dismantling, cleaning, and reassembly of a set of carbs for my 82 GL500I, and I was surprised how easy it was to do - with the help of experts. Going in I thought it might be a recipe for learning a lot and junking a set of carbs, but I put about 50 miles on them yesterday and today with nary a stumble at any RPM.
I got a set of carbs off the Internet a couple weeks ago labeled as complete but unknown condition. I'd already purchased a Harbor Freight ultrasonic cleaner, and got a copy of the Carb Rebuilding book from Larry (LRCXed on the forum). I took the carbs apart per the instructions in the book, keeping the left side parts separate from the right side parts. In retrospect that wasn't necessary, but my engineering background pushed me towards the organized approach. There really aren't that many parts to these carbs, but the ones that are there are important ones! Everything went into the ultrasonic with Simple Green and H20 in 3 batches - left body and parts, right body and parts, and jets by themselves. Again, probably not necessary to keep everything apart, but...
The ultrasonic is pretty amazing. Grease/dirt "boils" off the parts and dirties the cleaning solution quickly. Depending on how dirty things are to start, I think you have to change the water more often than the twice per batch that I did. The dirty water combined with ultrasound will actually stain the carb metal if left too long. I cleaned mine for about 2.5 hours each batch, turning the parts often to let things fall out. Carb cleaner flushing, hot water, and compressed air then gets most of the left-over gunk out except for the small holes in the jets. I used twist drill bits for those, since I guess someone smarter than me decided they should be .018" diameter and not .019" or telephone wire size. There are multiple relief valves that could also be taken apart, but since mine were working with compressed air I didn't get into them.
Putting things together is always a little more interesting than taking them apart, but again the instructions in the book kept me straight. Since I separated my bodies, I had to re-install the choke spring and get everything aligned pretty close so tubes, shafts and linkages between the two didn't bind. Also the better you get the two working together on the bench the easier syncing will be later on when they are installed. The o-rings seemed to be in good shape so I re-used everything, but it's probably prudent to at least replace the ones on the idle mixture screws and on the fuel crossover tubes. Gasket/o-ring set is $50/carb at Honda, $40-ish at discount. Total bench time the first time ever taking a carb apart was probably 8+ hours, but I wasn't in a hurry and that includes all the flushing and blowing. Next time less, for sure if the bodies aren't separated.
Got everything back together, installed and balanced using a Morgan CarbTune II. No leaks, idle is smooth at 1000 rpm, and acceleration is remarkably improved. I had been complaining that my bike didn't jump off the line like others I'd had in the class, but now I think it's right there. I hadn't really had any discernible problems with the old carb set other than weak acceleration performance, and it looks like the cleaning has corrected that. Can't speak to hesitations at certain rpms or after warm-up or some of the other issues seen around this site, but I'm now a firm believer in cleaning your pipes and orifices - at least the ones on your carbs.
Thanks to Larry and Blue Fox for the technical and moral support.
