No, you can join COG for free as a Forum Only Subscriber, but you only get 6 months for free. After that ya gotta join the club and pay.
They just changed it last month, so after being an active contributor on the email list-server and forums since the mid 90's and a paid-up member of COG for about 10 years in the late 90s and 00s I decided I'd had enough of their politicking and quit the COG forum. This forum existed years before the COG forum anyways, in fact this used to BE the COG forum before the politicians got involved and caused a big split.
I replaced the float needles in my 1989 carbs about 5 years ago. They had no signs of separation of the coating but it was visibly worn.
They are cheap enough, unlike the diaphragms. Luckily the diaphragms seem to last really well.
I've never been keen on manual petcocks. If you forget to turn it off, and a carb is leaking,....
With the vacuum petcocks there is an automatic system that shuts off the fuel as soon as ya stop the engine.
Of course that is all moot now as new bikes are all fuel injected, so only the old carb bikes are affected.
Some on here have disabled the vacuum side of the petcock and fitted electric solenoid fuel shut off valves and I guess that would work too.