Missing choke plates

I pulled apart my carbs and am unfourtuantly missing the choke plates. Just having some difficulty sourcing the part to replace them. Does anyone have any known sites? 82 kz550

Welcome to Z Jungle!

There never were any choke plates. These bikes use enricher circuits to start when cold.

Bill

What are these for?

My mistake! I stuck my finger into the throat of one of my 550 carbs and cut it off for you. Where shall I send it?

Sorry
Bill

cronk wrote: What are these for?

Need someone more familiar than I with 550's. My 1980 550 has plain old choke plates that pivot on a shaft. cronk's 1982 appears to have slides of some sort.

BILL

All of the TK-22 carbs, which were used on the first generation of 550 motors, use choke plates.

In my signature, I have a website for those carbs. There are some notes on preventative maintenance for the choke plates... checking hinges etc.

But once the flaps are gone, you will have to either make some flaps, get some from somewhere (almost impossible without buying another set of carbs), or completely block off the plate openings and go with totally manual choke. Totally manual chokes will require you to play with them more until the bike warms up. However, if you rejet the pilots, the bike will not need nearly as much choke.

KZrider has several threads on people making their own flaps, or doing the plate block-off with epoxy etc.

The details for rejetting the pilots is on my site as well.

If you search my posts I have a thread where I made some functional (but not pretty ) plates out of some thin stainless steel shims that are used to leveling industrial electric motors. However, any rigid piece of metal you can cut or use a dremel on should work. I cannot believe I used to ride this bike without the plates! I had no plates at all to start for a few years. It sucked. Then I blocked them off completely, but I had to constantly fiddle with the choke and find the sweet spot. It was almost more work than no plates. I'd suggest find yourself some thin metal somewhere, make yourself a template with a piece of paper or cardboard or whatever and start making some. Word of caution...be careful with the springs and the pins. I broke a spring and had to modify it a bit because just like the flaps, the springs aren't just laying around and guys that have them usually want to keep them for their own use.

sounds good looks like ill be making my own.
as i'm not paying 100 a pop for 4 new choke slides which were all i could find.
thanks for the info guys.