Even if you were to split (which I do recommend) the rails and separate the carburetors, so long as you don't turn the sync/adjuster screws, it will be fine. When you get the carburetors off, and the fuel drained, look down the throats from the intake side towards a light. Look at how much light is getting through in each of the carburetors. Operate the throttle/butterfly and watch the opening and closing of the butterflies to familiarize yourself with how they normally look. With that visual in mind, if you should happen to get them out of whack, you know what it's supposed to look like and can easily get it back close enough for it to run well. Then you can look at getting them synch'd properly.

As for dipping the whole rack, I don't recommend that. The fuel line T fittings and ambient air T fittings have O rings on them that will be damaged by the cleaning solution. The O rings will become hard and brittle (if they aren't already) and very susceptible to leaking. Fuel leaks can be a real mess. Also the Air Cut valve is plastic and also has small O rings on it, same problems.

 

Unless ur carbs are really dirty and bad fuel turned to varnish to a point they need dipped, u dont have to split the bank. Just disassemble 1 at a time, make shure u can use an air compressor with a blow gun. Sync is only nec if u split them. If u have a sync tool, then go for it but dipping may cause unwarranted issues. I dont have a shop so i take the route to correct the problem without over engineering it.

 

Yep, true. I'm knee deep in my cabs as we speak...another good cleaning from bad gas and trash in jets. Fun fun.

 

So I thought I would post an update on this in case anyone's interested.

The bike has seen a lot of love since I first posted. I pulled the carbs off and cleaned the main and slow jets with air only (they were all clogged pretty equally), replaced the clogged fuel filter, pulled plug 2 and let it dry then adjusted the gap slightly (I didn't do anything to the other 3, IIABDFI), installed some sliders and a chain guard.

After that, I put everything back together and fired it up. At first 2 was still misfiring, but after 30 second it came on and stayed on. I warmed it up with the choke and then ran it normal for about 5-10 minutes, and it was still running fine and idling smoothly.

Proud of my success, I moved on to non-engine work: new rear tire, new rear brake pads, and a new air filter. Got the bike back together and fired it up again. It ran normal with full choke, but as soon as I switched it off... Bam, more misfires like clockwork.

So obviously I don't want to ride around with the choke on all the time. Has anyone experienced a similar situation? Im guessing its that im getting a crappy air/fuel mix and cyl.2 is the only one that's weak enough not to ignite it consistently. My only ideas right now are to get the carbs synced, check the compression, check the timing, maybe clean/adjust the pilot screws, and buy a new pack of plugs so I can keep swapping out the zombie in cyl.2.

 

So here's a picture of the air hose setup. No solenoid, no hose from the front cowl air guides, just the hose from the DAI duct. When I got the bike the duct wasn't there so the end of the hose was just out in the open.

So I was checking out the post about carburetor part identification, and I definitely need to pull them again and clean all those air passageways. Likely the main air supply passageway is gunked up, but the choke one isn't. Hopefully I'll have time to get into that this week.

Also thought I should say that this is technically my first bike, so it's entirely possible I have no idea what I'm doing.

 

Just to double check something:
You said you put everything back together, started it with choke and it ran normal. Then you went to non-engine work which included changing the air filter.

So couple questions: did you have the airbox on that first time? And when it ran nomally for 5-10 minutes the first time, was the choke open or closed?

 

So the first time I had the air box and everything on but it still had the old beat up OEM air filter in it, and the second time it had the new hiflofiltro. The first time I warmed it up on 50% choke for about 5 minutes then no choke for 5 minutes, both with no misfires. Although I was idling it fairly high, around 3. I also should probably mention that the air temperature here was about 32 degrees when I did this.

 

Hey guys, I finally got to do a thorough cleaning of my carbs, but due to circumstances I wasn't able to accurately record the pilot screw settings before taking them out. I think they were a little low, around 1-1/2 or maybe even less on some. For now I have them set at the stock 2 turns out. I posted separately to see if anyone has recommended settings for my exhaust setup (Yoshimura RS-3 and hiflofiltro filter).

But my question to you all is, at what point should I sync the carbs, before or after I tune the pilot screws? I'll also be investigating the ignition cap wires as one of them is a little loose (cyl.2, go figure). Should I do that before or after?

Thanks!

P.s. I ran the bike today after putting her back together and after about 30 seconds warm-up cyl.2 lit and then achieved consistent ignition for the duration. I need to pick up new plugs soon because I'm sure the one that's in there is toasted now. Also if anyone has a recommendation on like a gel or something to lubricate the cap-plug connection that would be cool, I think I've read about people doing that for similar issues.

 

So it turns out the issues I'm still having with the bike are due to low compression. Just wanted to come back and wrap up this thread rather than leave it hanging. 40 psi in one cylinder and it stills runs on all 4! No wonder they say these things are bulletproof.