Good news

The after market brass parts in those kits are junk
All you should need to replace are the gaskets and O-rings and I recommend going straight to Kawasaki for the O-rings

Do it yourself. Replace ONLY soft pieces such as gaskets, o-rings, etc. Keep each carb's parts together in one container - don't mix parts between carbs because they wear together. Use the $300 you have left over to buy beer. :woohoo: Ed

While there are a lot of things I can work on mechanically,I'm not about to start tearing the carbs apart.I know and accept my limitations.I dont mind paying someone to do it right.I envision a pile of carb parts on my workbench and a non running bike in my driveway,lol.

Well as long as you plan to pay others to do the work on your bike you may want to have the carbs done correctly rather than by some local guy who doesn't specialize in vintage bike carbs. That being the case, I would highly recommend you send them to Wired George. He will return carbs that are done properly and function and look like new. Here' the link. Ed

www.wgcarbs.com

I was looking at wired georges web site already,planned to ask if anybody knew of him.Thanks for the heads up,Ed.His prices look good,I think it was about $375 or so.I'm gonna give him a call.

Dont think he's a hack at all.He cleaned the low speed jet,unless I'm wrong,I think it can be done without the carbs being "stripped down"I like this guy,he's honest,says he could rebuild them,but he's not a specialist,better to go with someone that does only carbs.He only charged me $50 to do what he did and the bike runs fine now.He only says it needs to be rebuilt because of dry rubber he saw.He got the bike running right,but says it should be rebuilt to keep it that way.He diagnosed a problem,fixed it and found a potential problem,and advised me.How do you get "hack" out of that?

missionkz wrote:

swest wrote: I'd get the bike back and do it myself.
Steve

WHAT? $350 to rebuild the carbs AFTER he allegedly, already striped the carbs down and cleaned the "low speed" jets!!?? Drivel.
Screw that BS! I think he might be a hack.
Buy yourself a REAL factory service manual and get that thing back home. Then ask here what "rubber" parts you can replace (probably for less the $15, no doubt).... then you can learn how to do it right yourself.

No way I'd send my carbs to Wired George. Major ripoff, and I've seen photos of a set of carbs he did for a guy on the GS Resources and they were NOT clean. In addition, he media blasts the metal parts and strips off the plating so the parts rust afterwards.

I know a guy that will do your carbs for less than half that of WG. PM me for details.

Nessism wrote: No way I'd send my carbs to Wired George. Major ripoff and I've seen photos of a set of carbs he did for a guy on the GS Resources and they were NOT clean.

Okay,they werent clean,but did they work properly?I'm not so interested in cosmetics,if I was I wouldnt have bought a 36 yr old bike.Do you know of bad work he's done,or are you basing "major ripoff" on pictures alone?

stokes wrote:

Nessism wrote: No way I'd send my carbs to Wired George. Major ripoff and I've seen photos of a set of carbs he did for a guy on the GS Resources and they were NOT clean.

Okay,they werent clean,but did they work properly?I'm not so interested in cosmetics,if I was I wouldnt have bought a 36 yr old bike.Do you know of bad work he's done,or are you basing "major ripoff" on pictures alone?

First of all I've rebuilt dozens of carb sets before and even wrote this rebuild tutorial so I know a thing or two about carbs... zeus.mtsac.edu/~cliff/storage/gs/Mikuni_...Rebuild_Tutorial.pdf

Here is a link to a couple of bashing session about WG from The GS Resources... www.thegsresources.com/_forum/showthread...-Wired-George-Beware

www.thegsresources.com/_forum/showthread...just-won-t-run-right

Again, WG media blasts the plated parts which makes them rust thereafter. You wan that?

Here are some photos of carbs I've recently redone. When I do them I replate the metal parts.

P1030123 by nessism , on Flickr

I've had my 2 sets of carbs apart more than a few times over the years and its not as hard as it looks...... and for that kind of cash savings I'd sure give it some thought....... good thing to learn anyway.

KZB2 650 wrote: I've had my 2 sets of carbs apart more than a few times over the years and its not as hard as it looks...... and for that kind of cash savings I'd sure give it some thought....... good thing to learn anyway.

Agree. Here is a link to a VM carb rebuild tutorial. The KZ version VM's are very similar. Cycleorings.com sells an O-ring kit for a reasonable price. members.dslextreme.com/users/bikecliff/i.../vm_carb_rebuild.pdf