[arsenic]

Not at all, just don't make it out like my sets are really overpriced. Because for what's done to them, they're not.

[Wild-Bill]

If you were paying attention, you'd notice that all I said was that paying someone else to do the work for you is expensive as well as the fact that 88-89 carbs aren't that easy to come by. Relax Chris, nobody's badmouthing you or trying to take away your livelihood.

[arsenic]

[foxox]

I just got the last few things together...

Set the AF screws to 2.5.
Got the airbox on... that was some ordeal.

Got the tank and all onto the bike, put it on Prime, and could smell some gas The fuel hoses between the carbs were leaking, so I had to take it all apart a couple of times before I got that squared away.

I tried to get the bike started on its own battery and that didn't work (I think the battery has seen better days). It took about a minute of cranking after jumping it to my car for it to fire up, but it fired up! This is how it was before, so at least I haven't done harm by rebuilding the carbs :P

I got it to idle at just under 1500RPMs. Before, it couldn't idle below about 2500, so this is a nice improvement! Since I haven't synchronized them yet, it wavered too much to get it to idle any lower than that.

I tried goosing the throttle a couple of times and it returned to idle reasonably fast. When I did that, a bunch of smoke came out of the exhaust.

Over the course of the day, while checking for leaks and stuff, I let the bike warm up and then cool down three times. I tried to set the idle too low the third time and it died; by that point the battery was too weak to get it going again, so I think tomorrow I will buy a new one; this one is junk and is probably misleading me on some of my diagnostics.

[foxox]

I have a little update to this with a cautionary tale below the quoted portion :P

tl;dr Like I say in my old posts here, REALLY don't try to separate the plastic parts of the slides from the metal.

...
DON'T DISCONNECT THE PLASTIC PIECES FROM THE SLIDES OR YOU WILL HAVE TO FIX IT
...
And here's how you will have to melt the plastic part back together (soldering iron does the trick) if you do break it off (but just don't do that; it doesn't help anything):


...

My engine felt a little weird on Easter Sunday while taking a ride through the park here, like it wasn't firing on all 4 cylinders at higher RPMs, so I decided to take stuff apart over the past few days to diagnose. It turns out this plastic slide part which I busted way back in 2011 while rebuilding my carbs came apart from the slide. The end pieces I melted back on broke loose and so the slide disconnected from the diaphragm. I discovered the problem right after taking the carbs off of the bike by pushing up on each of the slides and the broken one moved much easier than the others. Anyway, I put it back together (this time I tried a pressure fit by wrapping the remaining plastic posts in teflon tape and stuffing them into the top of the slide.. it's pretty snug but if it fails again I will resort to epoxy or something mechanical like a small screw). The bike feels WORLDS BETTER after fixing this.

[ZukiFred]

Glad you got it fixed, but why not buy a used one to just replace it?

[foxox]

Glad you got it fixed, but why not buy a used one to just replace it?

The 89 model year is different from the others so there isn't an abundance of these parts floating around for cheap. $166 IIRC for a new part, $70+ used I saw on eBay the other day. I really hate sounding like a cheapskate but they don't pay me much as a grad student. I had to start paying off student loans recently too, it's a big mess. I would like to replace it properly eventually so I'll watch prices for a while and buy when I see something low.