Used to post here quite a bit, then my bike sat for about 6 months and carbs gummed up, combined with a petcock that crapped the bed.

I stored the bike at a buddy's MC shop, pulled carbs and let their lead tech rebuild them for me. That was ~6 years ago - it's been sitting there ever since. Sheesh where does time go?

Finally retrieved all of the bike/parts/carbs but she's gonna need some TLC to get it back ridable. Planning on taking the last half of the day off and put in some wrench time.

I know that the forum had seemed to really lose a lot of the volume of posts that it used to have - nice to see the F2 forum looking like it has some more recent posting and threads.

 

Welcome back!
There are a few of us leftover from the old days still around. Those were good times.

 

Well, I did make progress last week, got the carbs on and throttle cables reinstalled. My grips had turned into a gooey mess, so I replaced those.

Tank had what I thought was rust, but appears to be more like a dried film of residue from the gas that went bad. I got it cleaned out, then filled it with 3.5 gallons of white vinegar and left it to sit for a day. The vinegar cleaned it up nice. I flushed it out with water, then mixed up a cup of acetone and marvel mystery oil to swirl around the tank to keep it from flash rusting.

 

Why did you park it for so long?

 

Life, I suppose. Not sure really. My kid was about 4 when the carbs crapped out and he’s turning 9 in December. I had a job where I was either commuting 30 miles each way or working from home, and I handle the drop off and pickup From school for him. Wasn’t a lot of time to ride the bike back then.

 

Well, 1 step forward, 1 step back. Installed a new battery. Hooked up an aux fuel tank, and my carb bank is leaking where the fuel tees split between each of the pairs. I’m not sure if the guy that rebuilt these missed an o ring or something, or if being dry for so long has been a problem.
So I pulled the fuel supply off the fuel rail. Once I cleaned up the standing fuel, I still gave it a crank. Moment of truth, bike fired right up and settled into a decent idle & sounded like it’s running on all 4 cylinders. I gave it a few more seconds and blipped the throttle and it jumped through 6k rpm or more with no indication of issues. So, promising stuff there.

My DDM HID headlight setup was not working, and had glitched on me a time or two back when I was still riding. To troubleshoot that, I had to pull the upper plastics off and get to where I had hidden the electronics. Turns out the relay bank module now requires you to hit it with a screwdriver to make the headlamp come on, and the protective coating on some of the DDM wiring was disintegrating. Made the decision to yank that setup out and go back to halogen or put a LED setup in.

 

The o-rings either side of the tee on the carb are really fragile and compress, luckily enough they are not hard to get and reasonably easy to change - BUT be sure to watch out for the tiny spring that sits between each carb trim screw - I put a piece of fishing line in them to make sure they don't go awol when I split the carbs as they have a habit of pinging off and disappearing. Also same when reassembling as again, they have a habit of trying to escape.

Lightly grease the tees before you build the stack otherwise they don't go together well.

 

Thanks, I actually got everything torn down last week and found that the o-rings flattened on both the fuel tees and the vent line tees. Ordered replacement parts from partzilla. I reassembled Friday night and did add a little grease. I’ve gotten in the habit of doing tear downs like this inside a big plastic bin to catch small parts and keep the tools all
handy. Spent all day yesterday working on the bike til it was time to go get the kiddo ready for trick or treat. Carbs went on, and I finally started a true reassembly. Had to wash all of the plastics before reassembling because they were so filthy from storage.

Had it running on a temp fuel setup and all seems well except my main fuel line from the petcock is cracked on one end, and that part number is no longer available anywhere. I’ve ordered a part for a shadow that on paper looks like I might be able to trim it and make it work.

 

that main fuel line is also discontinued for my CBR1000F - luckily I bought one along with a vent pipe about 5 years ago, but it worries me that more and more parts are becoming hard to find. My neighbour told me not to worry and just find a similar bend on another pipe and splice it in....

 

Got the fuel line for the Shadow that looked close on the web - 16955-MEG-000. - it’s not a perfect match but I think it will work out just fine once trimmed to fit.