South West Bikers | Motorcycle Forum

Depends who turns up and what brain cells they pack.

Garage Door will be open from 10am.

I'll be over around 10.30

Yum, top crispy Bacon butties.

So..., were there enough brain cells there today?

We seemed to go round I'm circles, think it could of been the petrol fuel.

Still no luck I'm getting it to behave.

No expert here but have you tryed good 98 octane petrol? Old bikes seem to run better on it. May not be an answer but probably help a bit

Big thanks to Ruffian who popped up last night to cast his fresh eyes over the running issue on the GT.

After a few hours, spilt petrol, head scratching, Googling and chips the beast finally roared into life.

Now it's time to balance it up and get it all fettled.

Once again, many thanks Ruffian

Whee ! well done.

As my dear ol' dad used to tell us - '3 Ps...Plug, Points, Petrol'.

well..., what was it?

Well it seems that there has been some tampering over the years with let's and needles being introduced, even it would seem a whole set of carbs (we're thinking from a Suzuki, explains why they are a bit NAFF), also there has been some adjusting done on the floats to allow them to increase fuel flow - to the point of not stopping fuel flow!

So they got readjusted, put back together and installed. Still needs balancing but there is now throttle control and no leaky leaky.

It was a challenge as there was a few certain items which were unsure of it was right or not for starters.

After a few basic checks and head scratching it was a major issue with flooding out the carbs.

After stripping the carbs apart as found out they are oversized compared to the listing of "standard" Kawasaki 550 of similar ages and a head scratching session made a brainstorming challenge.

The jets are 115 sized also which appears larger than the 108/110 they should have been. As it transpires though the floats were one of the main issues as although going through the full range of movement they still keep the needle valves shut causing the appearance of it not being the fuel line.
As well leak from the vacuum controlled fuel tap which would be losing pressure.


Glad to get it sorted, always nice to have a challenge every once in a while.
And si can get on with the next stages with the rebuild.

Again, well dunn.

I've had several problems which were a combination of multiple faults. Cars, computers, women, brain etc.

Hmmmm ....... I coulda sworn my gpz550 (same basic motor) was mid/high 120's stock and I ended up with mid/high 130's, different needles and the old LeDAir air jet kit in it.
I did have a bag of jets from the 550 (& the Mikuni 34's from the 1100's) but can't put my hands on them at present.
I've got a vacuum tap rebuild kit here too, but can't remember what it's for ......

Nice one. Well done