Thanks to Rev Ryder's great tip about pushing in the air box boots, and Steve's tip about repositioning the intake manifold clamps, I can now get the carbs on and off with relative ease. I can't make his zip tie trick work on those boots as my old hands won't work like they used to so I just used stainless steel hose clamps instead with a nutdriver….they go on and off with ease. I might even post some pics I took on my photobucket website. I am writing up a procedure with pics. Some folks left out a few details like vacuum and vent hoses, etc but no matter. This isn’t rocket science. I did remove the Tupperware the first time to reposition the manifold screws and just to make things easier. The next time I won't need to remove the tupperware.
Anyway, I drained the float bowls into a clear clean glass and there was no dirt, etc.
So I put the carbs on a special bench with the tank over the carbs, turned the gas petcock to prime, and the float bowls all filled with no leaks. The problem with No. 1 carb had fixed itself for now.
I redrained the float bowls and took off the bowl for number one carb. There was virtually no dirt in the carb body, and only alittle brown stuff in the bottom of the float bowl. I took out the needle and float, checked the spring, looked at everything with a magnifying glass. Nothing. I held the float submerged in a glass of gas. No bubbles. Everything looked new.
I put the bowl back on after cleaning it and redid the float bowl fill check on the bench. Perfect.
There is no gas in Cylinder No. 1.
I think what I will do now is change the oil, Check the volume of oil removed, lube the cables, put it back together and see what happens. I just have to know. If it still messes up, its off to Steve in Sunny Florida. If it doesn't mess up, I will probably wait to the end of the riding season in Sept. to send it to him. I will let you know what happens. Thanks to all of you that helped me.
Chris Dallman, COG 5807
(here are some pics...more to come)
http://s1217.photobucket.com/albums/dd385/CoyoteChris303/Connie/