Differences between two sets of VM26's

Keeping busy in the garage during a furlough week. Bought these racks from ebay and built them concurrently. Both are VM26's but there are quite a few differences between them.

Set one uses pilot air screws and has the joining plate on the top. Slides are gold anodized.
Set two uses pilot fuel screws and takes O-rings on the Bleed Pipe's and uses different needle jets compared to the other set. Slides are anodized clear or silver.

Interestingly, the main joining plate is different between these as are the cable brackets. Why did Kawasaki/Mikuni go through the expense of making that change?

Made the fuel Tee's myself from brass. I'm getting faster at making these but it's still a slow process. Got some ideas on how to make them better & faster next time.

Anyway, I suspect these sets are both functionally identical but I find it interesting that there are so many differences.

Projects like this are fun...but I'm always happy then they are done.

Fuel Tee's...

The carbs look great! I like the fuel tees too.

Another example of the quality of talent that exists on this forum.

Great looking!

Can only suggest performance and production improvements, I find the fuel screw type easier to work with,. I have also been making tees, one piece overflow pipes, float adjustment tools, brass drain screws, and even a brass idle adjustment screw, climbing the walls at the moment.

I am going through a similar process of mixing parts from different racks of vm26 and i found too a different design of main joining plate and cable brackets

My hypothesis is that some of those parts were meant for the suzuki gs 1000 or 750. Aren't they fitted with vm26 as well?

vict182 wrote: I am going through a similar process of mixing parts from different racks of vm26 and i found too a different design of main joining plate and cable brackets

My hypothesis is that some of those parts were meant for the suzuki gs 1000 or 750. Aren't they fitted with vm26 as well?

The Suzuki VM's have different brackets yet again. The idle speed adjuster knob faces down by the float bowls and can be reached with the bike running.

suzuki VM26's by nessism , on Flickr

Same design of the idle adjuster can be found on kawi brackets of the vm28 installed on kz1000st and probably J if i remember correctly

Today i put a set of 26mm pumpers on my thou ltd.that I have refurbished and got rid of the extra diaphragm so they behave like 28mm pumpers, I jetted them the same as the A2 set I took off and bench synchronized them, started straight up , warmed her through, put the gauges on and all within 1/2 cm mercury, that was a nice surprise, I then put the colour tune on for the pilot circuit idle and they were spot on also, well pleased with the way it picks up as well.

Both sets look great. I wold be interested in learning what the ID stamped on them are. The pilot screw set has a vacuum port on #3 for a petcock. While the air screw set does not have this port. So would assume the air screw set would be an earlier set.

gd4now wrote: Both sets look great. I wold be interested in learning what the ID stamped on them are. The pilot screw set has a vacuum port on #3 for a petcock. While the air screw set does not have this port. So would assume the air screw set would be an earlier set.

Yeah, the air screw set is earlier...not sure what year though. 1977 or so I think. The lack of vacuum port is interesting. Not sure what's up with that. I'll look for numbers and post back...

Air screw set are 76 , 900 carbs, vac tap 78 A2 1000, 77 1000 I believe no vac stub,