ok so here is where i am now ... as a poor mechanic that i am

took me most of the day BUT i got the carbs off, soaked them in some of that yamaha carb dip,when i drained the floats it looked to me like there was water in them but other than that they looked ok, so i cleaned those with both the yamaha stuff and some spray on crap,
got the carbs and all connections back into the bike without too many issues .... but now i am stuck

i cant get the fairing back on ..... it acts like it wasnt meant to fit the bike ... i took it off on wed to give me some more room and so i would have 1 less thing to worry about effin up ;-) but damn it will not line back up now ... what do i do, i put a little gas in her and she started but smelled a little funny i figure that is prob a lot of the carb cleaner burnin off ..... all i got left to do is get that damn fairing to mount up and get the seat back on and i get to go ride her and see if it is fixed (god i hope it is)

 

Post#1 leads me to believe you have a fuel starvation problem. Post#8 leads me to believe that you may have a differant problem--no smoke means that you are not over rich and flooding out. Smell of gas tells me that you are not starving for fuel. Post #3 tells me that the PO ran this thing thru at least 24 idle cycles with maybe a little wrist racing thrown in. Post#1 leads to believe you may have been running on one cylinder. If the all that you have done does not fix your Gremlin I would take a look at the ignition system. Mainly with fresh set of plugs. At least pull the plugs to see what they look like. I'm gonna bet on an ignition problem. Keep us posted. We all learn when solutions are found to these kind of problems.

 

if i could just get the damn front fairing back on so i could go test ride :-(

 

finally got the fairings back on ... damn they come off easier than they go on

just took a short test ride with no problems going out for a longer one now ... will let you guys know how it went ...

 

synaptik;

I think you might have made your work a little bit more involved than it needed to be, ie; I've had my carbs off and back on at least a half dozen times without removing the fairing, and if it turns out that the problem was just water in the fuel, you could have solved that by draining the float bowls and the tank without removing either from the bike. On the other hand, it's cool to learn how to pull your bike apart and put it back together again and bottom line? If what you did worked, it worked.

And if you were able to remove, clean and reinstall your carbs correctly, your mechanical skill is at least as good as the average bear, and better than you give yourself credit for. Hope your bike is running good now.

 

RK1 : i took the fairing off cause i was scared to scratch it or drip gas on it ;-)

i tried my damnest to get a hose onto the end of the nipple to do the floats while on the bike but just could not get my mits in there enough, the carbs were a little dirty and the front main jet was pretty clogged up so i would have had to take the carbs off.

did a NICE LONG SPIRITTED test ride today (over 200 miles) rode her hard as hell and not a sputter one, ran freakin great ... ( realized that this bike is just at the edge of my comfort zone when i hit 145 and saw that 35 mph turn just getting closer and closer .... really glad the PO already did the stainless lines and upgraded pads .... gotta work on my form ;-) i have been riding cruisers and am not used to leaning that far over into turns :-)

thanks everyone for the info .... and i hope i never have to do that again :-) (at least not for a long time)

 

EXACTLY HOW/WHAT DID U SOAK ?

 

i got a 5 gallon bucket and 2 bottles of the yamaha solution, mixed it as said on the instructions on the bottle, poured into the bucket, removed the diaghrams, slides and any other rubber/plastics, and soaked both carb assemblies for about an hour or 2 in the solution, took it out and generously sprayed with carb cleaner as the solution does use water in the mix i wanted to make sure i got it all out of there before putting back together

 

Hi!

Posting from the UK here, got myself a '99 "Firestorm" and im having these pretty much exact same issues.

It all happened since i changed the cct's. During which i had to drill a siezed screw out my air box, whilst it was still on the bike. And try as i might, some of the small metal shavings may have found their way in and around the jets, to the eye, it looks clean, but if a very small piece found its way down into the bottle neck of the jet, u reckon it could cause it to intermittently feel like its running on the one cylinder?

Thinking of poking some very thin core electrical wire down the jets, see if anythings clogged, whaddya reckon?

Thanks.

 

you may get better advice from another poster here ...

but i would at least say pull the carbs and pull the jets off and spray some carb cleaner through them from both ends untile they run clear and clean, mine were all kinds of gunked up when i got mine off.

 

Sigh.

Well i guess these are also the symptoms, when you dont put the vacuum hose back onto the correct nozzle of the fuel tap.

Oh well lesson leart, least i didnt strip the carbs before i noticed!

 

lol ... i luckily did not do that when putting it back together ;-) i just knew i would too

i prob didnt need to strip mine either to fix it but for piece of mind i wanted to go ahead and get them all shiney again :-)

 

darjm,

Check to make sure the petcock is on and that the vacuum line goes to the back of the petcock, NOT the bottom vent nipple. (I think we got another one here, guys! <snicker, snicker>)

[Edit] Aha! I guess I should read all the posts before replying! Duh....

 

You know Greg I think this supercedes the CCT's as the most common error on VTR's by far...

 

Yup, sure does. That's why I gave it a name - PVLIR!