step one: get the seat off...??!

When the bike was brought to my garage, it was tied down on a trailer, seat & side panels removed. What was the first thing I wanted to do when I first got it in my garage? Of course, I wanted to sit on it and get a feel for it! I picked up the bike's seat and figured out how to put it onto the frame. It clicked into place nice & secure. I sat onto it and it felt good. Then, my friend who was giving me the bike wanted to show me some parts of the bike which were under the seat... which brought me to my first question for the online forum I spoke of previously: how do I take the seat off?! If I'd had any more than a couple hours of experience owning a motorcycle, I would have been ashamed of asking, but seriously... the seat removing levers are really hard to find: a piece of grey metal on either side of the frame that don't look like they do anything at all! So after a couple days I had that figured out.

My first goal with this bike was to clean out the carburetors. The carb body has 4 float bodies, one per carb. The float body contains all the jets through which the gas flows, the floats, and float valve.

The way the float body works is very similar to the way a toilet water tank works. The fuel is fed via gravity from the fuel tank down into the carb float bodies, and once it fills up to the desired level in the float bodies, the floats - get this - float, and since they're attached to the float valve, they shut off the supply of gas. Then while the bike is running, the fuel is fed from the float bodies through the jets, and when the level in the float body decreases, the valve opens up and lets more fuel in, and so... forth...

The problem is: if you run the bike, then let it sit for 5 years without draining the float bodies, the fuel will have become a gooey green & crusty yellow varnish, coating the insides of wherever it was sitting, and horribly clogging all the jets and other small passageways through which the fuel needs to smoothly flow. The bike I had been given did not have it's float bodies drained. I knew I could count on the carbs being a complete mess, plus IF the carbs turned out free of varnish, it couldn't hurt giving it a cleaning, since this had never been done since it's manufacture in 1986.

In the service manual, te steps to remove the carb body form the bike are 1) remove seat & gas tank. 2) remove air cleaner box. 3)pull up on carb body, removing from rubber boots connecting it to the engine heads. 4) remove throttle & choke cables. 5) remove carb body from bike.

In my head i was thinking 1) well I figured out the seat thing, thank God for that! And the gas tank, shouldn't be too hard. It's already missing one bolt, so I just undo the other and pop, it'll come off... right? 2) Looks simple enough. 3) pull up on carb body... how far? Why? 4) what the heck do these cables look like, how DO I remove them once I find them, and why don't I see any instructions in the entire service manual about removing these cables? 5) I have to get those darn cables unhooked before I worry about removing the carb body!

So the way it went down was:
1) removing the gas tank.
The tank bolt unscrewed very easily, and I was ready to pull it away, when... hmmm... it won't lift up too far... I checked for more bolts I'd missed, but soon realized >duh< I had to disconnect the fuel lines!

2) remove the air cleaner box.
two simple bolts to unscrew, the airbox lifted right off! Easy!

this photo was taken just after removing the air cleaner box, looking down into the valve compartments of the carb body. Notice the yellowed varnish which was once fuel. This isn't even the inside of the float bodies, and there's already signs of gunk to clean!

3) pull up on carb body.
The carb body is connected to the engine heads by four rubber boots, each of which has a metal ring clamp on the carb side & engine side. So I loosened all eight ring clamps. Easy enough. I got a good hold on the carb body and pulled straight up. This is where most of the discussions I'd had with people online, and where in the service manuals, and on youtube, the carb body lifts up out of the rubber boots and makes it easier to reach the cables removed in the next step. My carb body didn't budge. I pulled again, harder. I'm not one to be boastful, but if you've seen me, you know I'm anything but scrawny. I was pulling so hard I was starting to think I was going to hurt myself!

I went to the forum where I could go further than just watching video tutorials or reading in the service manual how it's supposed to work. I posted my second question: "why won't my carb body budge?" Turns out, with the older models the rubber boots go all hard and don't like to flex open to let the parts free. Plus, it was about 40 degrees. Luckily, someone had a solution: fit a fullsize wonderbar (a flattened metal crowbar - fortunately I have one) between part of a frame and one spot on the carb body which could withstand the force (and not to slip and hit the delicate parts which would break and force me to spend hundreds on a new carb setup), and pry it gently out from the once-rubber-but-now-concrete boots... and it worked! I got the carb body separated form the engine heads after hours of 'gently' forcing it up and out!

4) remove throttle & choke cables form carb body.
My next few weeks were spent lifting the carb body as far up as I could and just looking around to see what these cables were and how they connected, and which screws I had to undo to get them detached, I spent a lot of time on the online forum asking all sorts of questions, and getting lots of answers telling me to "just look at it, and it'll make sense". This was the opposite of helping! To keep this long post from becoming ridiculously long (too late?!), I finally figured I could rotate the carb body up to one side, exposing the bottom of the carbs, making the cable attachments more accessible. I detached the choke cable first, it was easier being just one cable. The throttle cables were two cables that connected to a small wheel on the carb body. I had to loosen the bolts actually ON the cables to loosen them, allowing some slack so i could simply unhook them. In retrospect this was actually quite easy. The only thing that made it difficult was the fact that I have '0' experience and had to learn everything as I went! I'm convinced that the hardest part will be reattaching these cables when I want to reinstall the carb body.

The small wheel with the horizontal cable attached to it is the throttle wheel, from which I had to remove the cables. Very very hard to reach, but very rewarding once I got them out!

5) WOOHOOO! I was walking away from my bike toward my work bench for the first time while carrying the carb body with me!

I took these pictures as I disassembled the bike and ran straight to photoshop so I could label each tube / cable so when I woudl eventually be putting the whole thing back together I would be able to figure out what tube connects where. This was about 2 months ago now, and I've already forgotten, so I'm very glad I thought to do this!

labeled where one of the tubes connects to the air box.

The fuel lines that hook up t the fuel tank.

The fuel lines- where they connect to the petcock valve assembly.

My new dilemma: Now that I have the carb body away from the bike, I have to figure out how to clean this sucker out...