New improved floats that make the GL1000 much better

[cfairweather]

In my opinion, the biggest problem with the GL1000 carbs is the float design. The thin brass should have been made out of stainless steel or at least plated steel. They bend way to easily and a dimple always occurs where the pin touches the tab, which causes the float to stick. Good news: Recently, I ordered two sets of new floats on eBay and I was shocked to see they were made out of steel, not brass. Not sure where they are made, but these are way better quality than any GL1000 float I have seen. I installed them on a carb rack and they worked great. The pictures on eBay show brass, but they are steel. I notified Everett Power Sports of the change asked them to change the pictures.

Here is a link: https://www.ebay.com/itm/361996479101?_ ... R-7S9ajrZQ

[cfairweather]

Everett Power Sports says they have lots of these, but they do not know the name of the manufacturer. They do know they are made in Taiwan.

[gltriker]

in this seller's "Item Specifics" of their similar floats offerings there might be an answer

https://www.ebay.com/itm/323973286230?_ ... CH5A79HV36

[cfairweather]

The damineding brand didn't make the new floats with steel. I actually tested their floats a couple of years ago and asked them to use stainless steel, but they told me yesterday they still use brass. I don't know any other brand that is from Taiwan so it is a mystery who made them.

[Don R]

Out of stock, day late dollar short!

[cfairweather]

They have lots of them, even though it says out of stock. I communicated with Cameron at Everett Power Sports and he said they just need to finish packaging them. He said they bought a bunch of them. As long as I can buy these, I won't ever use brass ones again.

[redglbx]

Cedric;, brass would probably be fine if it were thicker, my concern with the steel parts is rust. One of our members (burnsyoface34, back firing into the carbs thread) here posted a short time ago a photo of his carbs showing the floats and the hinge brackets were severely rusted. Struck me as quite odd but didn’t register in my brain because I’d never seen that ,, but now it makes sense that those carbs must have the steel hinges, stainless would be a good choice as well as a heavier gage of brass. My .02

[ericheath]

Anything is better than the Valkyrie floats. Plastic and not adjustable.

[redglbx]

Yepper Eric , when I did the carbs on my buddy’s Valk many years ago, he was running the 6 into 6 “Cobra” pipes that are noted for being terrible and losing typically 10-15 rwhp, just not good !

I used my Sun Machine to check the individual a/f ratio at each pipe which was all over the map. So my buddy who really loved his pipes begged me to try and fix it, so I ended up taking the carbs on & off a number of times to jet each cylinder individually to get them close to the same as possible. The plastic float hinges were part of the problem because you just got what you got which ended up being “in the neighborhood” for settings.

Anyway, between different jet setups and idle mixture screw setting I got it much closer, throttle response was nothing short of incredible and the sound was completely different from the initial starting point, much smoother sounding ! The good news (???) is that after nearly 2 weeks of work the rwhp numbers were almost, almost back to what it was factory stock ….. but it ran/rode/sounded much better !

But those plastic hinges/tabs were not helpful at all.

[Sidecar Bob]

The GL500, and CX/GL650 have plastic floats. In 25 years on those bikes I've never needed to adjust the float height (I don't even bother checking anymore) and in 25 years on forums for those bikes I've never heard of them actually needing needing adjustment so not being able to isn't a problem.
That said, a few people have thought their floats needed to be adjusted but it always turns out to be out of spec aftermarket float valve needles.

[redglbx]

That’s really interesting Bob ! On my buddies Valkyrie it had the oe factory needles & seats and I’ll add that the float adjustment wasn’t off much really, if I had been able to adjust them I might have a bit, but it wasn’t enough to really worry about so I just put it back together.

That was an interesting deal because normally the 6-6 Cobra pipes sound kind of ratty, with the engine kinda sounding a bit lazy. Once I got all the cylinder a/f ratios about the same it had a completely different exhaust note , much smoother sounding ,, kinda sporty really. The owner was really happy !

As I noted above, I’m really no fan of the Cobra brand pipes, they just don’t sound good and they usually good for a significant power loss. My brother had them on his VTX 1800 and I tried hard to talk him out of them but he liked them (they were loud !) and after I put an aftermarket tuning module on it, it ran much better but never got to dyno it.

[Sidecar Bob]

Some years ago I read an interview with Lang Hindle in which he said that the exhaust system that made the most power was almost never the loudest.

Unfortunately many people think that louder is more powerful but it only seems like they make you faster because nobody wants to be right behind you anymore

[redglbx]

Bob,,,,, with very rare exception will an aftermarket exhaust system outperform a factory system ! I seen it on the dyno many, many times ! The really loud ones were usually the worst performance wise with the only real exception being the screaming eagle stuff,, it usually did fairly well.

I used to hang out at my buddies shop in the dyno room which had a predominantly HD clientele and it was funny to watch these guy’s come in on their newly straight piped HD’s convinced that it had to have doubled the h-power because it was just obnoxiously loud, only to witness the results where it typically lost 10-20 rwhp.

A lot of them were outraged & convinced that the dyno was wrong so just left po’d. A couple even went so far as to reinstall the factory pipes & came back in to re-dyno their bikes, only to be surprised because the power was back. I’m not a big fan of aftermarket pipes as you can probably tell,,, but if you spend the time to get the jetting correct a lot of them will get you back to the stock levels and a few may actually make a couple more like the screaming eagle stuff.

[Sidecar Bob]

Drifting farther off topic, I use original Harley mufflers on both of my bikes because they are top quality items and I can get them really cheap. A few years ago I was chatting with a couple of non-biking neighbours and I asked if the sound of my exhaust bothered them. Both replied that they actually like the sound of my bikes "not like the guy up the road with the Harley" (he had obnoxiously loud mufflers that rattled windows no matter how he tried to take it easy inside town).