Its that time of year again, I let the bike sit too long over winter without first putting Seafoam in the gas and now the pilot jets in my carbs are clogged up and the bike won’t run off choke. I thought about doing a post on how to clean out the carbs but since someone already went through the trouble of doing some fairly nice videos of the process I’ll just use those instead. Parts of these videos are wrong here and there and while the guy looks like he knows what he’s doing its apparent he hasn’t done much with this particular carb or bike before, but overall they are ok. Enjoy.
Most of the time you would not need to fully disassemble the carbs to clean them, however if you do so be sure to use Ziv’s stainless replacement screws as it makes future maintenance a breeze. If the bike has only been sitting a short while and will not start or will not idle off of choke then 90% of the time the pilot jets are clogged and just need to be cleaned not the entire carb. If you happen to have Ziv’s screws already on your carbs you can very easily clean out the pilot jets (or swap main jets) in about 5 to 15 minutes without taking the tank off. Maybe I’ll do a future post on that process.
This one is a good example of the differences between a California model V Star (in the video) vs a 49 state model (mine). Most likely you would not have to deal with the extra gas tank vent lines.
I also wouldn’t even bother with the fuel catch jar. What are you saving? 5 drops? Just hold a rag under the petcock when you pull off the fuel line and call it good as the numerous pics of me on this blog doing the same have shown:
