I have had very positive results from using rubbing alcohol for softening the varnish in neglected carbs. Usually, I use it as a quick clean up before disassembly for a complete cleaning. My method is to drain the carbs if needed, fill them up with the alcohol, ignore them for a day or two, then go back and open them up. The varnish deposits should be soft enough to either simply pour or wipe out.

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It's easier than I make it look!

I've been using methanol (wood alcohol - also sold as gas line anti-freeze, but buy it in the paint dept where it's cheaper) for cleaning carb parts for years. It will soften the varnish in a completely blocked jet in under 1/2 hour.

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Mr. Honda ('83 GL1000/Dnepr) summer
The Famous Eccles ('84 GX650EI/Velorex700) winter
Click: Colour schematics for all GL1000 & GL1100 and GL1200 standard models plus instructions on how to download the full size version
"A guy with two sidecars can't be all bad." - Cookie
Another guy with two sidecars..... Hmmmm... must be something to that....

Wouldn't that dry out and destroy any rubber parts?

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thanks

i must admit... that is the lazy way... ill stick to my way though which involes the whole breakdown procedure..... and reassembly

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i wish they made bikes for tall people... im tired of ridin on the back seat while in contol
to quote johnny cash "one piece at a time"
beach bomber
77 gl1000

Ive always used Seafoam and it seems to assist with removing any varnish coating isues that Ive had. Is there a drawback (besides the price) of using this product?

If you have E85 gas available, look for it, run that for a little while to clean carbs also. Or get the carbs full of it and let soak a bit then run.
E85 was cheaper than Unleaded when I was getting it. 85% Ethanol alcohol 15% gasoline and works as well as most store bought additives but costs far less! E85 should be Ethanol which is not as bad on parts as Methanol. I avoid buying 10% or more methanol gas, That stuff is nasty!

Not everything runs great on E85 but that is not a problem, just mix with real gas for your own blend!
50% unleaded 50% E85 makes about an E45 or so.
My old Ford truck did not like straight E85 so well but ran fine on 50/50 mix. The Ethanol cleaned up the whole fuel system so after awhile my old truck actually ran better than it did before I used the E85 mix.

My problem is no one sells E85 around here that I know of. I was getting E85 about 150 miles away when I would be passing through there on trips.

Rubbing alcohol has too much water in it for me. I don't like it for much of anything. It is cheap though.
Methanol is nasty stuff, toxic absorbed through skin, eats parts worse and such.
Ethanol is just Moonshine. Moonshine is Illegal since no taxes were paid! Pay fuel taxes and poison it and it's motor fuel. Pay liquor taxes and it is EverClear 190 proof at the local liquor store.
About 150-200 proof Ethanol will absorb water from fuel also like drygas etc.. does.

If looking for cheap fuel cleaners to run, compare E85 to store bought additives, if E85 can't be had then compare size and cost for additives at store and cost of Everclear from liquor store.

General thoughts around here are to stay as far away from E85 as you can. Randakk has some reading on the subject here: http://www.randakks.com/TechTip56.htm

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"I prefer the abstract concept of incoherence in the face of great feeling to beautiful, full sentences that convey little emotion." DDL
1978/9 Arthur Fulmer Dressed Road bike
1975 Naked Noisy and Nasty in town bike
and a whole garage full of possibilities!!

I wouldn't run an engine on e85 that wasn't set up to run on it (timing &c) but there is a lot of unwarranted fear mongering about small (10% or less) concentrations of alcohol in the fuel.

I have not seen fuel for sale that did not contain 10% ethanol in over 10 years. When I bought my 'Wing's engine & carbs in '92 I took the carbs apart to clean them. I always drain the tank & carbs when I put the bike away for the off season. When I took the carbs apart for the second time in 2008 to put in a Randakk kit all of the rubber parts were hard & brittle (its hard to blame the fuel for 29 year old rubber hardening) but they were very clean inside. I can't say for sure whether that was because of the alcohol in the fuel, but everything I did inside them other than replacing the rubber was probably not needed.

Methanol? Again, I wouldn't run an engine that wasn't set up for it with more than a small percentage, but it is the main ingredient in a lot of gas line anti-freeze used in a lot of engines and I have never heard of any hard proof that it has done any harm.

I have specifically recommended it for cleaning out blocked jets. It will not do any harm to brass.

The biggest problem with e10 is that the energy inputs to produce the ethanol are greater than the energy derived from burning it so its not so "green" as those in the ethanol business would have you believe (while they are lining up for government grants to build new distilleries).

The one provable advantage to e10 is that not fuel line anti-freeze needed with it.

I'm with Randakk on the ethanol in gas thing. I leave near the Canadian border and when I run Candian gas (it has more ethanol ) in my 77, it runs like crap in less than a tankful. I have to run a little Marvel Mystery Oil in it every tank. Maybe it helps the slides to move easier. I am doing a complete overhaul soon. I will try the slow cook with antifreexe method. I like Octanes original suggestion here as it gives the cleaner a chance to get into other parts of the carb. It is not too hard to remove the parts to the level he suggests. What really gets me is why we run ethanol?? Does 10% burn that much cleaner the gas that is in there to pay for the 10% loss of fuel mileage? Maybe it somehow makes the rest of the gas burn cleaner, but the "simple" math says that if you lose 10% in mileage, you're going to burn 10% more fuel to make up for it...??? Right?

If you loose 10% of your mileage when you run fuel that is 10% ethanol something is wrong with your fuel delivery system. Those of us who live in places where you can't get fuel without ethanol report similar mileage figures to those who run non-ethanol fuel and often report particularly good mileage figures.

One of the often overlooked effects of ethanol in the fuel is that it dissolves any varnish and flushes it through the system. I suspect that when you run Canadian gas your bike runs poorly because the varnish in the system is dissolved back into the fuel and is trying to be burned. If you were to run several tanks of e10 the engine just might run better than ever.

The theory behind e10 is that the alcohol comes from "renewable" sources. That is, when you extract petroleum from the ground and refine it to burn in engines there is that much less petroleum left in the ground for later but when you use corn to manufacture alcohol you can grow more corn later. They forget that doing this means that, unless you reduce the amount of corn available for feeding humans & cattle, more land is required to grow the needed corn. From what I understand, if all of America's motor fuel was produced from corn there would be almost no land left for growing food. And that doesn't even address the issue that you have to burn more fuel to produce the ethanol than it can replace (you have to run trucks to deliver seed, farm implements to plant, grow & harvest it and more trucks to take the corn to the distillery, which has to burn something to heat the evaporators).

[quote]I will try the slow cook with antifreexe method.[/quote]
Where did you find that?

Randakk suggests boiling carbs in distilled water. Others have suggested adding a bit of dish washing detergent. I have never heard of using antifreeze and I don't think it would help much. I don't think I would want to be down wind of it either.

Are you misreading my suggestion to use methanol (commonly sold as gas line antifreeze but buy it as shellac reducer because its cheaper that way) to soak parts that have varnish?

People have also suggested lemon juice and I remember somebody saying vinegar. I think I'd want to try either on carbs that I thought were beyond repair first.

Bob you keep saying "Canadian Gas" like it is different than the States but I do not believe it is any more?? I have not seen a non ethanol gas in over a year here in the States. Other than Race tracks and Marinas and Airports I think all of it sold in the US has corn in it now.

I have read several claims of this distributor or that distributor selling pure gas but when researched it is false. I have not seen any that does not contain 10% or more in a while.

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"I prefer the abstract concept of incoherence in the face of great feeling to beautiful, full sentences that convey little emotion." DDL
1978/9 Arthur Fulmer Dressed Road bike
1975 Naked Noisy and Nasty in town bike
and a whole garage full of possibilities!!

I was referring to ericheath's comments about occasionally using Canadian gas...

My experience and numerous other posts on ethanol all conclude you get 10% fewer with ethanol mpg than without ethanol. With E85 it's much lower. I can't find any gas without ethanol anymore either. The point is how are we helping the environment if we burn ethanol? Yes it's renewable, and we can find some ways around the costs of producing it as the Brazilians have done for years, but for now, it just costs us money and probably adds to the greenhouse gases especially when you factor in the production pollution.

I am ready to soak my carbs, 764A. I think I will look into the shellac reducer way. I did try the boiling in water before. It removes some gunk, but I think the antifreeze would be better. My thanks to all who contribute to these sites.

My experience with boiling is not that it cleaned anything but it dramatically softened what was there so when it came time for the scrubbing it was much easier to clean.



OK gotcha I misunderstood

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"I prefer the abstract concept of incoherence in the face of great feeling to beautiful, full sentences that convey little emotion." DDL
1978/9 Arthur Fulmer Dressed Road bike
1975 Naked Noisy and Nasty in town bike
and a whole garage full of possibilities!!