[JZ67]

I cooked a few mice with brake cleaner or starting fluid one of the two.

LOL, me too until the damn mouse ran under my neighbors car - eeeek!

[shadowhunter04]

update:
I took the carbs out again... did the once over on them... put them back in, and sure enough, I got frequent backfires/afterfires (would pop once in a while a couple seconds after I cranked)... looking at the exhaust as I'm cranking, sparse smoke puffs are coming out. I've been cranking so much I'm starting to worry that my starter motor will give out. As for the airbox, I've had it open many times and can't see that it's been closed off any way. When it came to the kick stand, I thought you could start a kat with the stand down as long as it's in neutral (the neutral light will turn off when I switch gears)...and I'm pretty sure I have good compression because it takes a pretty good push to be able to get it to roll it while in 1st gear (you can hear the engine turn over)

[88' 600]

i had one that when in neutral with the side stand sown it wouldent start until i got a new switch it puzzled me but i dont remember if it backfired at all

[StevieB]

Unless they have changed the formula, starting fluid contains ether, which expands greatly shortly after leaving the container and thus falsely raises the compression and thus allows the motor to start (low compression almost always causes hard starting.) If used in a healthy engine, or used too much (and how do you know what's too much? Most folks keep spraying until they are sure the motor will keep running) it can cause pistons to come apart.

When I suspect a fuel-delivery problem, I use carb cleaner. It is basically fuel, and takes the place of gasoline. If the motor starts with it but dies when I stop spraying, I know I have a fuel problem.

[elkat]

Have you pulled the plugs again after all this cranking to see if they are wet or dry yet? This will tell you alot. You usaully just have to let the bike sit for a while if you think it is flooded.

[eak0703]

If you are still having trouble

after all that cranking, take out one of your spark plugs...is it soaking with fuel and oil? or is it bone dry. if its wet, probably means that your fuel screws are open too far and you are just pouring waay too much gas into the engine.

I find that once i've flooded the engine the safest thing to do is to take out each plug, wipe/clean it and then leave the plugs out for an hour or so and let the fuel in there evaporate.

i had my kat running, but my carbs fuel screws were imrpoperly ajusted and it eventually sputtered dead...i couldnt start it again until i let it "air out" after cleaning off the spark plugs.

people keep saying to "turn" those screws 2...or 2.5 or 2.75 turns out...so ill ask a stupid question: what is the definitin of a "turn"???? even my manual doesnt tell me....how many degrees are in a turn?? 180, 360?? just me being stupid again..but its a big difference, at first i thought a turn was 360...but if i did 2.5 turns at 360 on my carbs then fuel would flooooood into them...so perhaps its 180?

[shadowhunter04]

PROBEM SOLVED!!!!!
So, today, i took the carbs apart again, making sure the float heights were correct, the air/fuel was at 2.5 turns, everything was clean, and blah blah. Meanwhile I had the spark plugs out (2 and 3 where wet, 1 and 4 dry)... and made sure they were gapped correctly. I also double checked that my coil's primary was between 2 and 4 ohms and the secondary was 20-40 k-ohms...and I double checked that each spark plug would spark on it's own respective plug. With this all said and done, I put the carbs and spark plugs back in place and started cranking... Quite a few LOUD afterfires this time (It was kind of funny cuz the first one happened when my dog walked right around the corner and was facing the tail end of my exhaust)... It would continue to backfire, but wouldn't start. After a while my brother got of work and headed over to help me.

Of all things. It was electrical. He took a look at it, I looked at the wiring diagram and we discovered that the previous owner had jerry-rigged the wiring so that both coils were going at the same time (1-3 fired at the same time and 2-4 did as well)... This obviously causes the afterfires/backfires and the weak spark. The funny thing is, electrical connections was the same problem with his 92 FZR, and it's a relatively easy fix. I just shouldn't have ruled it out, because I didn't know the previous owner that well. Now it runs great!

Anyways, I wanted to thank you all for the help, I really appreciate the suggestions. And just remember, if not mechanical, then it must be electrical

CHEERS!

people keep saying to "turn" those screws 2...or 2.5 or 2.75 turns out...so ill ask a stupid question: what is the definitin of a "turn"???? even my manual doesnt tell me....how many degrees are in a turn?? 180, 360?? just me being stupid again..but its a big difference, at first i thought a turn was 360...but if i did 2.5 turns at 360 on my carbs then fuel would flooooood into them...so perhaps its 180?

On my '90 Kat, it was supposed to be turned 2.5 turns. As far as I've come to see, a turn is the full 360 degree turn... I wouldn't think that 2.5 turns would cause your carbs to flood unless you left your bike running on instead of "on" (on-uses vacuum from carbs to activate the petcock valve)

[arsenic]

a turn is 1 full turn 360 degrees