Topic: 1st Carb Rebuild - Success!

[DF]

You gotta love it when things go right!  After months of studying the service manual and every carb post question I could find on SOHC4, I finally ripped the 022A carbs out of my '74 CB550 to rebuild. Before rebuilding, the throttle would stick, wouldn't idle reliably, flood and dump fuel.  It was very hard and embarrasing to ride. lol

Anyways, I bought some K&L carb kits and took the last rainy week to tear down, clean and rebuild.  Of course, I followed the instructions provided here by first replacing the air filter, doing the valve adjustments, timing, spark plug gap check/replace, cam chain tension, etc. 

I probably spent 5 hours on cleaning alone (over a course of a couple of nights).  There was a heavy, heavy varnish throughout the carbs and the brass jets, etc were in really rough shape.  I took pictures throughout the process so I could refer to them afterwards in case I got into trouble. 

The nearest Canadian NAPA dealer wouldn't sell me SeaFoam (He had it, but wouldn't sell it to me), so after telling him off, I soaked the parts in Varsol for a day or two and then used PJ1 carb cleaner to spray/brush out the varnish and the air passageways.  It cleaned them pretty good though.  I used compressed air to blow out anything else that was loose in the carbs. 

The floats were set way too high (25mm to 30mm) so I brought them back to spec (22mm).  Assembling was fast, probably 2 hours, with the most frustrating part being the round bowl gaskets.  (Found a tip on here saying to tack the gasket corners with scotch tape, screw down the bowls until the gaskets barely touch the carb bodies, then pull out the tape out carefully and tighten bowls down.  It worked good - no leaks.  Replaced every part with the stuff the K&L kits came with. 

Anyways, got the carbs bench synced, mounted and synchronized with my new Carbtune II and she runs like a friggin top!  Just like a new bike!  The wife jumped on the back for the first time last night and we went out on the highway to a small town cafe. It purred like a kitten and didn't miss a beat.  I have to say if anyone is considering rebuilding carbs, its easy, just follow this sites directions step by step without taking shortcuts, and you could save yourself hundreds and have the satisfaction of learning how to tune your own ride.

Anyways - thanks to everyone here for providing me with the info to help keep this old bike on the road!  See you later - I'm going for a rip!

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[Gordon]

Congrats on your sohc/4 rite of passage!   It definitely pays to do it right the first time.  Glad the scotch tape trick worked well for you, I've tried many different techniques over the past several years and that is the one that has always worked the best. 

[gold01ca]

good work greg and congrats!
why wouldnt the NAPA goof sell you seafoam?
they have a seafoam display here in the NAPA Cranbrook BC store and the staff really push it.
next time try Gunk Hydro Seal for carb dip, works real good and available at NAPA (if the goof will sell it to you!)
I am in the middle of rebuilding a spare set of carbs for my 750 and your success story is inspiring.

cheers!

[DF]

The Napa dealer was in a small, small town.  He had it on display by the till, but he grabbed it out of my hand when I was going to pay for it.  He said he just got it in and didn't even know the price on it.  I couldn't beleive he would turn down a paying customer.  All he had to do was phone another dealer to get the price.  Oh well.... I guess thats why Stoughton, Sask is a dying town in the middle of a booming oil field.  Some of these small businesses are backwards....

He did let me have a brochure though - the friggin bonehead!  lol

I should have mentioned that I did buy a second set of carbs of ebay to tear apart and learn on before I got the guts to do my own 022A's  I'm glad I did though as I had to cabbage a couple of float pins and a bowl out of the extra set.

If anyone needs any odd parts out of the 069A's, let me know.  I'll probably never need anything else out of them.

[gold01ca]

hey greg how did you like the carbtune gizmo? easy to work with and get 'em all synched?
did you order direct from the UK?
how many loonies including exchange and shipping?

cheers!

[DF]

That Carbtune is great.  Very easy to use, quick to set up and good documentation. 

I got it direct from Morgan UK.  It was $150 Cdn including shipping and the storage case.  I got it in a week and a half.  I was thinking of making something, but then I probably would have never really trusted the readings and would have always wondered if the bike never ran well. 

I am glad that I got it for the tool collection.  Well worth the money as far as I'm concerned.

[gold01ca]

thanks for the heads up, gonna order me one from  Morgans for sure.

cheers!

[brandon]

Forgive my serious Noob question here: What is a Carbtune tool? Anyone with a U.S. link to someone who sells it or some kind of literature?

[gold01ca]

hey brando, www.carbtune.com check it out
vacuum tool for synchronizing multi carb engines

cheers!

[luvhonda750]

Nice, I'm in the process of doing the same on my 77 750K7 . The one thing I find a bit unusual about the keyster kit is that they did not include new slow jets, its seems to me that a jet that is only .0016" in diameter should be replaced entirely. one of the problems I had was a slow jet was pluged which resulted in a cold pipe on #4 at idle. The high "E" from my electric guitar did the trick on this one. Another thing I realized is that if you do not get the carb tightly back on the rubber intake manifolds they will leak air and you will have all kinds of balancing problems. Yeah also the new rubber gaskets for the float bowls were also a pain.