Cleaning pieces of the carbs

Hi all,
My carbs run good and probably don't need a rebuild but, dang, they look ugly. Some pieces look like they were spray painted, some pieces are just pitted a little, and some pieces like the choke and some screws are rusted to the bone. Can I clean and remove the rust or is it futile and should I just look to replace those pieces?

Go to www.wgcarbs.com and ask at his website's forum. He rebuilds carbs for motorcycles and can probably answer your question better.

Hey cool, and he's local-ish. His prices are very competitive also. I'll give him a hollar and see what he says. Thanks

Here's an excerpt from an earlier thread about how austin3119 did these - - -

[Click on image for larger view]




austin3119 wrote:

Here's a couple of pictures from the ebay auction. It's hard to see how they looked before, but you can see the choke bar was all rusted. That was the theme with a lot of the parts on the carbs. The tops were all pitted and nasty, hardware rusted, choke lever bent, a lot of varnish in the bowls etc....

i15.photobucket.com/albums/a355/austin3119/carboriginalpic2.jpg

i15.photobucket.com/albums/a355/austin3119/originalcarbpic.jpg

The camera helped some on my after pictures. I would rate the finished carbs as a 9 or so. The pictures definately make them look like a 10 . That being said, I would not hesitate to put these on a show bike.


For how made them look like that. The first answer is a lot elbow grease as is the case with everything on these old bikes.

The first thing you need to do is take the carbs completely apart. Then I dipped them in a 1 gallon can of solvent that comes with the tray included in the 1 gallon can for dipping. The can isn't real big (just like a 1 gallon paint can) so you have to do limited parts at one time. Make sure you remove ALL rubber parts before dipping.

I could honestly write about this forever as the carbs took a long time to finish, but I will list some of the things I used and did.

1. All new bolts and washers. They realy set everything off. I was able to get them at the local hardware store in the correct lengths.

2. Had the carb tops and bowls polished by my local polisher for $40.00 (including a set of fork tops).

3. I used black Glossy paint on the choke knob to bring it back to life.

4. #000 and #0000 steel wool to get out varnish left in the float bowls after they were dipped.

5. Sandpaper, and steel wool to get rid of the rust on various parts like the choke bar that is attached to the choke knob, rusted parts by the floats etc...

6. Eastwood Aluminum colored paint for a few parts like the idle knob, and the 2 bars that hold the carbs together, also 1 piece on top of the carbs that was real nasty and couldn't be polished. That paint looks awesome by the way. I did not use paint for the carb bodies though.

7. A real "fine" grade brillow pad on the carb bodies to get out the leftover spots and such, but don't go crazy here or else you will take off the finish on the carbs. Be real gentle.

8. Dyna jet kit

9 Carb rebuild kits

10. New carb boots from Jeff at Z1 . They attach real snug and look great. I don't think I will need any clamps!!

11. A hammer for the choke bar because it was bent badly.

Like I said before it's really just a lot of patience
work and elbow grease. I had a buddy help me with the rebuild kits, and dyna kit because I've never rebuilt carbs before.

On a side note, with the original carb purchase and everything I've done to these, I think I am into them for about $450.00 with dyna kit, polishing, hardware, rebuild kits, paint, etc...

Not cheap by any means, but I think it was worth it. I learned a lot and had fun doing it!

Post edited by: austin3119, at: 2006/10/26 11:35