GL1200 Carb Rebuild / Clean up questions

[mhynze]

Working on my GL1200 carbs, The only carbs I've rebuilt myself are my cb500T .. so I have a few questions.. and might have more soon enough...

I believe these were taken off a bike and stored inside, overall not too bad... but could use some cleaning id imagine


1. I see theres an excellent 1100 rebuild in shop talk, but i was unable to locate a 1200 rebuild, is there one on here?

2. With throttles and and chokes seeming to move and operate freely, how far into a clean/rebuild would you go?

3. I remove the "carb banks" from each side, both are still together as 2, at this point is it wise to seperate them into single carbs?

4. The one pair looks pretty good / not a lot of gumminess, but the side , is this the Air vent? (i have a FSM and it seems to be..) Why wouid this be all gummed up?

5. If seperated, honda says to use new O-rings, can these be sourced from "o-ring kits" or do i need to buy honda/randakks, generally most of the rubber on these appear in good shape (haven't seprated) and I want to avoid buying anything I dont have to

I'll leave it at that for now i guess, with a picture of the gummy "air vent" if i am correct

[mhynze]

Pics

[jdvorchak]

Throttle and choke moving freely doesn't really mean that much. In my opinion they don't really need to be separated but do need to be disassembled. Caps off the top and pull the slides and inspect the diaphragms. They have to move smoothly. Keep the individual parts with each carb so you can put them back where they came.

Float bowls off and remove jets, floats and float needles. All need to be spotlessly clean. Count the turns on the mixture screws then remove them and clean the screws/needles and squirt lots of carb cleaner into the hole from which they came.

When you think you have the idle jets clean, clean them again. You have to see all the way through them and the holes are tiny. I find that boiling the jets, both main and pilot, in distilled water for 15 to 20 minutes goes a long way toward cleaning them.

Other than their orientation they are like any other CV carb. So any video on cleaning/rebuilding CV carbs would apply.

[jdvorchak]

One more thought. You would only have to separate them if they leak fuel from the interconnecting fuel passages.

[salukispeed]

As with many Kehin carbs. Hopefully the PO will have removed the tamper plugs but be very careful when removing the idle Mixture screws. each one has a tiny O ring and tiny back up washer that the tension spring pushes against. They often stay in the carb body and get lost in the cleaning. A Very very tiny hook made from safety wire can be used to pull them out. Do not lose the washer. The Randakk kit is excellent. I went the OE Honda route and bought the rubber o ring kits for around 12 dollars each and they even came with the small needle/float seat strainers and all the "o" rings and such. The diaphragms are fragile if you get carb cleaner on them.

[mhynze]

One more thought. You would only have to separate them if they leak fuel from the interconnecting fuel passages.

Thanks ... they dont seem to be leaking anywhere, but i never did run them, other than that air vent tube pictured? I'm not sure why it would be gummed up with fuel?

most things were fairly clean... but I'll clean them twice

The tamper plugs were not on these carbs, and i did forget to count the turns.... carbs are from 84,

I read somewhere there were some differences in the 1200 carbs?

These are going on my 76 GL1000 with the 86 1200 from a fuel injected 1200

[rcmatt007]

I cleaned mine up with them still on the plenum. I used randakks gasket kit.