1981 KZ550A2 Update

A pucker moment. :ohmy: I'll bet there's more out there, be careful. :whistle:
Steve

Man-eating pothole!

Ok so, I have put on another couple hundred miles and I still have a pesky carb leak through the overflow tube. It appears after running and parked, about 2oz of fuel comes out of #2. I am gonna pull em out tonight and check float height with clear tube test. If that checks, i will open them and look for debris and to inspect the needle valves and seats. If I remember right one of the valve seat washers was toast and I did not replace it. My guess is that is causing the needle valve not to seat fully with out overfilling the bowl. There is some thickness to that washer, w/o it fuel height would be higher in that carb, hence my leak. More to come and some pics. Might shoot vid of the clear tube test.

R

You don't have a gasket in there at all?
Steve

I can't remember for sure, but it's possible

Wouldn't be the first or last mistake. :laugh:

I suppose it could vibrate some but I didn't think it would back out or leak, but I have revised my thinking on this one now. R

That could cause it to seep. Maybe some Teflon tape on the threads?
Steve

If you are keeping the air box, you might want to go ahead and make the tools for removing bowls without removing carbs. This means replacing the bowl screws with allen heads. Then you make these tools (scroll to the bottom of the page):
gpzweb.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.co...stmentsAndMaint.html

Removing carbs means re-syncing because of the amount of wrangling required on the 550's. So even though it's much slower to try to remove a bowl while the carbs are installed, in the long run it's faster since you don't have to re-sync or worry about vac leaks etc. This is especially true if you are only doing work on one carb.

But before you can take advantage, you need to replace the bowl screws with allens... preferably stainless, and hit them with antiseize along with the gaskets.



BTW, you can use the clear tube method while the carbs are on the bike, just make sure to shim the center stand feet so the bike is perfectly vertical.

+1
Steve

Okay, so clear tube has all heights at 3-4mm below the mark with no variance between carbs. The bowl overflow tube are soild have no cracks or leaks. Sure enough there was some crap in the #2 needle valve seat. Cleaned that up, all of em actually and put it back together. I think new needle valve and seat will be in order if it keeps leaking. There are some faint seat marks on the needle points. Nothing like the bad picture in the manual. BTW all the washers were there so I did not make that mistake. I am now officially a friggin expert at removing and installing the carbs, could do it with my eyes closed 15 min on 15 min off. Started fine, will get some saddle time in when the rain goes away. R

Still some leaking this morning. Less, but still leaking. I ordered the float valve assemblies. Pretty sure this is the fix. It did look like someone tried to drill one of the seats and there were some wear markings. Definitely metal removed from two. I suppose after 35 years it's due. Anyway when I get em and install I will update the progress. R

Inspect the overflow tubes. They can get a hair line crack. It happened on my 28's years ago. I just took the bowl from some 26's I had laying around. They have a seam and with expansion and contraction particularly where you are and climates like it, the seams can crack.
Steve