Xj550 carbs puking gas

1) take it to the church. I know. Will do, I had a friend volunteer to do my carbs for me this summer. Hes a nice guy and a good body work artist, but I learned my lesson about doing my own carbs. Will be going to church on my next free weekend.

Right now Im just looking on a second internet opininion. The carbs...looks like carb #2 as best I can tell... Are puking gas every time I start the bike. Im guessing its a stuck float. Thought for a minute I might try to rebuild the petcock, but if it were the petcock it would be leaking when off, no?

Anything else I should be looking at?


Its kind of a pisser because im looking at the last couple weeks of good riding weather, but Im sure Ive got gas in my oil at this point and having gas puddling around your boot isnt...what do they call it...safe? Is that the word? Maybe I just change the oil and make a hip holster for my fire extinguisher......

 

Or bad float needle or float height

 

if you have a stock petcock there is no off position when vaccum is removed by turning motor off petcock closes. it is only in prime that fuel will flow.
try tapping the carbs with a screw driver to see if floats are just stuck.

have you wet set the fuel height?

with airbox boots off you will see fuel flowing out of the left side hole on the airbox side of the carb throat.

 

if you have a stock petcock there is no off position

Yep, This I know. I mean when the engine isn't running it doesn't leak.
I've tapped the carbs (gently) with a ball peen and no improvement. I didn't set anything myself, I had this friend who did the whole process for me, and I know he did some things wrong. It was real nice of him, and he meant well, but.... if you want something done right, do it yourself.

No gas pouring out of the airbox, its coming directly off of the carb rack. I haven't been able to tell exactly where at its coming from, but it looks like somewhere on carb 2. Intake boot? Manifold boot? Bowl drain? I don't know. Saturday I'm checking plugs, doing an oil change and maybe pulling my racks. Gotta get my garage spic and span before I crack the rack, though.

 

Sound like orings on fuel tubes between carbs.

 

if you remove the airbox boots and set petcock to prime you should see if it is over flowing from the overflow if it is not you should be able to see it overflowing from the fuel rail o rings or the tee in fuel line.
new tees are on ebay which also use orings where the oem part does not.

ask your friend how he set the fuel level. if he dry set the floats that could be the problem. that is just a base line.
carbs need to be wet set to proper height.
when your friend did the carbs did he need any parts?
rule of thumb is to replace the o rings on valve body minimum the orings on mixture screws and o rings on fuel rail.
you should also replace the tee.

then you can run the bike and see if the throttle shaft seals need replacement.

 

when your tank is empty it's going to have the dry heaves, i hate when that happens

 

I have no idea how he set anything, and I can't ask him because he's left town for the season. I won't see him again until spring. What happened was I was bitching about not having enough time to pull my carbs and rebuild them before the Sturgis Rally (we work at a campground in Sturgis together...) and he tossed out the idea that he would do my carb job if I would, after the rally, build his honda a custom seat. I pulled them, brought him to him and then ended up trailering the bike up to his place so he could adjust the carbs and tune the bike. We ended up getting it back on the road 2 days before the rally started and it did run 200% better than before.

However.... I started noticing lots of little wrong things.... like he forgot to put my hose clamps back on my intake boots, he didn't ask me to buy any parts, he replaced my tank mount hardware with hardware that wasn't mine, he didn't want me to make him a seat anymore.... sure. I've been told.... "Don't let anyone take your carbs to church for you" and this is a great story of why. He's a good dude and was really trying to help me out as a friend but his attention to detail with these carbs obviously was lacking. I still appreciate that he did it for me, and it might not even be his fault. I've put 1000 miles on the bike since August, easily, and they just started puking last week. So who knows.

Saturday I will be rolling it into the garage. Maybe to start breaking the whole bike down and starting a winter re-build earlier than I wanted to. This is our first winter in our new house with my nice new big garage, so I was planning on doing this anyway.... just not until the snow started forcing me to 4wd instead of 2wslide. Kinda hoped I could bandaid until then, but if the rack is coming out then half the work of teardown is done already.

Thanks, guys, for pointing me at problem areas. I suppose I might make a dedicated re-build thread with pics.

 

If he did not ask you for any new parts (maybe he was generous enough to throw new rubber parts in?); chances are really good that you have rubber O-rings, seals, etc. that are crumbling. He may have added silicone grease during reassembly and things seemed better for a while but now bits and pieces of rubber are crumbling away and reality sets in.

A new garage with a nice workbench sounds like a really nice place for Church. Get yourself a heater in there and you will be golden.

 

I have a carb rebuild manual in pdf form do you need a copy? I can upload it for you

 

Xj4ever upper rt corner of page will have all the new seals, gaskets, "O" rings ...I recommend replacing the needles and seat with solid tip vs the rubber tip... less chance of fuel eating it up slowly .

 

Non issue. Viton is fuel-proof. It is, however, not age-proof. Over a few decades they will harden and tend to not seal properly.

 

Would be much obliged. I had one saved somewhere once upon a time, but I use 5 different computers on any given day so I'm not sure where I ended up saving it.

 

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