Topic: How salvageable are these PD46A carbs?

[shads]

Hi all, id like to ask the hive mind's opinion on these PD46A carbs from my '77 CB550.  Ive been putting off dealing with them as they were the worst part of the bike (and the bit I understand the least!) but now the time has come to (hopefully) sort them out.

The bike had clearly sat for a long time before I got my hands on it - there was about an inch of solidified gas in the tank - so the bowls and floats are obviously covered in varnish.  How bad do they look and what should I definitely be replacing?

I already have four of the Honda rebuild kits, which includes the gaskets and rubber bits.  Im hoping most of the metal bits should clean up ok, but should I be looking at getting new floats?  There's also pretty bad rust on the exposed parts of the tube that joins the carb bodies, not sure Metal Rescue will be enough to sort that out.

[shads]

Floats after 30 mins in hot soapy water.

[Bodi]

These are in great shape if all similar to the bowl you show. There's some gummy stuff but no corrosion that I can see, gum will clean off with some work and solvent. The floats look excellent, they are solid plastic and can't be holed like brass ones.
The outsides look good too, the usual dulling from age and weather but I don't see any problems that would retire any bodies.
As a general rule, re-use the brass parts on a carb reno: aftermarket ones rarely work well, Keihin parts are expensive or NLA, and these bits don't wear much at all in normal use: the needle and emulsion tube do wear from contacting each other but it takes many thousand miles to have a noticeable effect.

[hsas.69]

Nothing there a good soak in mean green wouldn't take care of.

Sent from my LG-LS993 using Tapatalk

[Bankerdanny]

The carbs on my '77 550 looked worse than that and cleaned up beautifully.

[flybox1]

Elbow grease and carb dip/cleaner. As stated above, they'll be just fine.

[shads]

Thanks guys, that's great news! 

Ive pulled most of the them apart now, wasn't too difficult when using Brain Barnes' fantastic guide (the link from this forum to that is dead by the way).  Ive got a couple of questions though:

- His guide mentions that each pilot jet should have a spring, washer and o-ring.  None of mine had the washer, there was only the spring and then the o-ring.  How important is the washer?  Should I look for replacements?

- The choke shaft has felt seals which I can get from dudesgarage.com, however the throttle shaft has a combination of some being felt, some being rubber o-ring and some had nothing!  Again I can get replacement felt seals, but is there any source of replacement o-rings?
- What is the correct combination of felt and rubber seals?  This guide says "on carbs #1 and #4 these seals are made of felt. On #2 and #3 they are rubber", is that correct as mine had rubber on carb #1 and I have some that are missing.  Just want to make sure I get the seals correct.